Zanabazar Square
Script details
See all script details: code, region, status and more
| Code | Zanb |
| Script type | abugida |
| Region | Central Asian |
| Status | Historical |
| Direction | LTR |
| Baseline | hanging |
| Case | no |
| White space | unspecified |
| Complex behaviors | diacritics, contextual forms, complex positioning, required ligatures |
| OpenType code | zanb |
| ISO 15924 Numeric Code / Key | 339 (alphasyllabic) |
Script description
The Zanabazar Square script is also known as the Mongolian Square script.
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It is named after its creator, Zanabazar, the first spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, who also developed the Soyombo script. The script has also been called the Mongolian Horizontal Script or Xawtaa Dorboljin. It was used for writing the Mongolian, Sanskrit and Tibetan languages. The Zanabazar Square script was inspired by the Tibetan script and has graphical similarities to Phags-pa and its variant forms.
The Zanabazar Square script is an abugida. Consonant letters bear an inherent vowel, which can be changed by writing a vowel diacritic above, below or alongside the consonant. Only the vowel /a/ has its own independent letter. Other independent vowels, for example those at the start of a word which don’t have a consonant to attach to, are written using the letter a with the appropriate vowel diacritic attached to it. There is also a vowel length mark which is written after the vowel to indicate a long vowel.
Languages that use this script
| Language | Writing System Code | Writing System Status | SLDR/CLDR locale | Regional variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classical Mongolian | cmg-Zanb | in use | cmg-Zanb-MN |
Unicode status
In The Unicode Standard, Zanabazar Square script implementation is discussed in Chapter 14 South and Central Asia-III: Ancient Scripts
.
Resources
- ScriptSource page for Zanabazar Square - all about scripts, languages, and writing systems
- Wikipedia article on Zanabazar Square