I have always wanted to contribute to my Tiprasa community in some meaningful way. I just never knew what form that contribution would take — until April 2026, when everything changed in the span of a few weeks.

A Language at a Crossroads

Kokborok is one of the oldest languages of Northeast India. Spoken by over a million Tiprasa people across Tripura and beyond, it carries centuries of oral tradition, songs, stories, and a way of seeing the world that belongs entirely to our people. Yet for all its richness, the question of how to write Kokborok has remained unsettled — and increasingly urgent.

The debate is not new. For decades, the Kokborok script question has been one of the most discussed — and most divisive — topics in Tripura. On one side, there are those who advocate for the Roman script, arguing for practicality and wider accessibility. On the other, there is a deep desire among many in the community to write Kokborok in a script that feels truly our own.

As someone who cares deeply about the Tiprasa community, I wanted to understand this debate properly. So I started digging.

What I Found

My research led me to the two existing indigenous scripts for Kokborok — Aima and Kokmari. I had encountered both before, but this time I looked closely. I wanted to understand why, despite their existence, the Roman script was still being considered as a serious alternative.

What I found was sobering.

Both scripts, while rooted in genuine effort and cultural pride, had seen little to no development or refinement in almost fifteen to twenty years. They were incomplete — missing characters for certain sounds, lacking standardisation, with no digital infrastructure to speak of. No fonts. No keyboards. No way for an ordinary person to type in these scripts on a phone or a computer.

It wasn't that the community had rejected these scripts. It was that the scripts had never been given the tools to grow.

And that's when the spark hit me.

I should mention that after I had already built and launched Yapiri, I came across a third indigenous script — Hachukma, created in 2025 by Anan Debbarma. It is a thoughtfully constructed script with a dedicated website and a virtual keyboard, and its digital presence is genuinely commendable. Hachukma takes an acrophonic approach, deriving its letter forms from Tripuri cultural objects and natural elements found in the region — a concept rich in symbolic meaning. Where Hachukma draws its forms from the visual world of Tripuri culture, Yapiri takes a different path, designing each glyph purely around the sound it represents, with no symbolic layer between the letter and its pronunciation. Two different philosophies, both born from the same love for Kokborok. That there are now multiple people independently working on this problem, at roughly the same time, tells us something important about how urgently the Tiprasa community feels this need.

The Decision

I am not a linguist. I am not a professional typographer. I am a member of the Tiprasa community who looks at a problem and asks — what can I do about this?

What I saw was a gap that nobody had stepped in to fill. Not because people didn't care, but perhaps because the task seemed too large, too technical, too uncertain. Creating a script from scratch — designing every glyph, mapping every sound, building a font, a keyboard, a website — is not a small undertaking.

But I decided to try.

I started in April 2026, almost on impulse. I began by studying the phonology of Kokborok — its vowels, consonants, aspirates, the sounds that make this language uniquely itself. I designed each glyph with both visual elegance and linguistic precision in mind, making sure every symbol had a clear, unambiguous relationship to the sound it represents.

I named the script Yapiri — from the Kokborok word for footprints. Because that is what writing is. Footprints. Traces of a living voice, left behind so others can follow.

What Surprised Me

I never expected it to come so naturally.

Within weeks, the script had taken shape — 25 consonants, 6 vowels, 10 numerals, 5 punctuation marks, and two combining diacritics for tone and reduplication. A complete phonemic alphabet, designed specifically around the sounds of Kokborok.

By the first week of May, I had a working font. By May 10th, the website was live.

I am not sharing this to boast. I am sharing it because I want the Tiprasa community — and anyone who cares about indigenous languages — to know that this kind of work is possible. That one person, with enough care and determination, can build something meaningful in a very short time.

What Yapiri Is — and What It Isn't

Yapiri is not a finished product. It is a living project.

It is a phonemic alphabet — meaning each symbol represents exactly one sound of Kokborok, with no ambiguity. It has a working digital font, a Keyman keyboard for desktop and Android, a full technical specification, and a growing body of documentation. It is free for the community to use.

But it is also just the beginning. The next steps — community adoption, academic review, and eventually a formal Unicode submission — are long roads. They require collaboration, feedback, and the involvement of linguists, educators, and community members far beyond what one person can do alone.

That is precisely why I am writing this.

An Invitation

If you speak Kokborok, I want to hear from you. If you teach it, write it, or simply love it — Yapiri belongs to you as much as it belongs to me. Try the script. Use the keyboard. Tell me what works and what doesn't.

And if you are a linguist, a researcher, or someone working on indigenous language preservation — I would very much like to talk.

Yapiri began as one person's response to a gap that had been open for too long. What it becomes depends on all of us.