Tirhuta

Mithilakshar is the writing system, which is traditionally for the Maithili, an Indo- European language, which is spoken in the Indian state of Bihar and eastern Nepal.

The language has a rich history that spans thousands of years, but years of neglect by officials of the Bihar government and migration have led to the Mithilakshar font is rarely used. Most speakers of Maithili have begun to use the Devanagari script, the example also for writing the adjacent westerly, central Indian languages Hindi is being used. Thus the number of people has decreased markedly in recent years with acceptable knowledge of Mithilakshar.

Description

Mithilakshar resembles the closely - related Eastern Nagari script, which is used to write more, eastern location, East Indian languages ​​such as the Bengali and Assam.

In fact, many letters ( eg ক / k /, খ / k ʰ /, দ / d /, জ / dʒ / ) are written both in Mithilakshar as well as in Eastern Nagari same. Nevertheless, there are enough differences between the two writings which oppose a mutual understanding. For example, the letter that the sound / r / in Mithilakshar represents the same shape as the Eastern Nagari letter ব / b /, and the Eastern Nagari letter র / r / has the same shape as the Mithilakshar Letter / w /. Furthermore, mean many different things associated letters and vowel signs in the two writings. Thus, in the Eastern Nagari script, but in Mithilakshar represents the conjunct ত্ত a geminate voiceless non -aspirated dental plosive / t ː /, the syllable / tu /.

History and current status

The oldest sample of Mithilakshar script is an inscription in the Shaivite temple in Tilkeshwarsthāna near Kusheshwarsthāna in Darbhanga district of Bihar. The inscription is mentioned in the old Magadhi Prakrit language - that the temple has been built on " Kāttika Sudi " in "Shake 125 " (AD 203), which is the day that follows Diwali, a holiday that still considered to be very important is when you install icons in a temple. The writing of this inscription has only very slight differences to the modern Mithilakshar.

Despite the almost universal switching from the Mithilakshar font for Devanagari script to write Maithili using some traditional pundits still always the font to send each other ceremonial letters (PATA ), which have to do with important tasks such as wedding. Fonts on this font were designed in 2003. Currently, efforts are made to preserve the Mithilakshar font and develop them for use in digital media by being encoded in the Unicode standard, for which proposals were submitted.

The inclusion of Maithili in the " VIIIth Schedule of the Indian Constitution" (2003), which thus this language gives official recognition as an independent from the Hindi language, therefore opens up the possibility that this leads to a re-introduction of Mithilakshar on a larger base, in line with similar developments in India which promote separate identities.

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