Talk:Newar script

Requested move 8 February 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Moved as an uncontested request with minimal participation. If there is any objection within a reasonable time frame, please ask me to reopen the discussion; if I am not available, please ask at the technical requests page. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 05:21, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

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Pracalit script → Newar script – Prachalit or Pracalit script is not a commonly used term compared to Newari script, as seen in the ngram.This source mentions that the most common name for it is Newari, and the name Prachalit was popularized later by Shakyavamsa. Similarly, this script was first referred by the name “Newara Akhara” or Newar script in 1654 CE. All academic sources in English and Nepali refer to this script as the Newari script. For example:1, 2,3,4. Since the Indic suffix “-i” is considered inappropriate it would be good to move this article name to Newar script. Jujubhaju (talk) 05:38, 8 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 04:43, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Background info

This is the Newar language which has a rich written tradition extending back at least a thousand years. Over the years the community has developed a number of distinct scripts or writing styles, reserving particular styles for particular purposes - Ranjana writing for religious purposes, Prachalit for everyday writing, Bhujimmola for administrative purposes, and so on. Similar practices of reserving particular styles of writing for particular purposes has also occurred in European writing using the Roman system. But whatever style they are writing in, the Newars are still writing in their own Newar language (which they call Nepal Bhasha). In 2010 Michael Everson set out to encode Ranjana, with visual similarities persuading him that this as a writing system used in many parts of the Himalayas for writing Buddhist texts, though he focused on Nepal and the Newars, who in turn petitioned him to consider Prachalit as being much more useful. In the end Everson concluded that Ranjana and Prachalit and the many other styles should be unified. And so they should be, for they are used to write the same language. But there are some inconsistencies between the different scripts, and one account by Rabison Shakya seems to give Prachalit several more basic characters than Ranjana and Bhujimmola; how do we resolve this? Of course, we must refer to the language, and in this case the phonetic inventory, which shows that Shakya's account of Prachalit is correct, there are aspirated nasals not identified in his tables for Ranjana and Bhujimmola. A question not asked by Everson was whether the Newar writing should be unified in Unicode with Devanagari, just as the writing of Sindhi has been, but that would be politically unacceptable. Bizarrely a proposal to encode Prachalit has recently been posted by Anshuman Pandey (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N4038) who seems to be following the same confusion as Everson, focussing on visual similarities rather linguistic use.

integrationist Unicode forums

Rich Farmbrough, 22:02, 12 January 2013 (UTC).