Lisu Syllabary: A folk creation in the Yunnan-Tibetan borderland

Abstract

The Lisu Syllabary was designed by an illiterate farmer in the 1920s and spread widely in Weixi County in the Yunnan Province of China. Its creation process proves that it is not necessary for a primitive writing system to undergo the stage of pictograph or ideograph; rather, the concept of syllabic segmentation may arise inherently in the human mind and may be successfully used in script designing. A font library including 989 computer glyphs is provided in the present paper in order to show the total appearance of the Lisu Script.