Beginner's Guide
Everything you need to start reading and writing in Yapiri — no prior knowledge required. Work through each section at your own pace.
Section 1
Yapiri is a writing system created specifically for the Kokborok language — the mother tongue of the Tiprasa people of Tripura, Northeast India. The name yapiri means "footprints" in Kokborok — marks left behind by a language, a people, a way of speaking.
Unlike Bengali or Roman script, Yapiri was designed from scratch around the actual sounds of Kokborok. Every symbol represents exactly one sound. Nothing is hidden, nothing is assumed. What you hear is what you write.
This Primer walks you through the full alphabet, step by step — vowels, consonants, numerals, and the small but important marks that complete the system. By the end, you'll be able to read and write your first words in Yapiri.
Section 2
Yapiri has 6 vowels. Every vowel is a full, independent letter — just like consonants. Vowels are always written after the consonant they follow. There are no hidden vowels in Yapiri.
Section 3
Yapiri has 21 native consonants, organised into phonological families. Related sounds share visual features — so once you learn one, you'll recognise its relatives. Aspirated consonants (ph, th, kh) are derived from their plain counterparts through a consistent visual modification.
Section 4
Four characters sit outside the core native alphabet. They are fully formed glyphs that follow the same design grammar as the rest of the script — but each has a specific classification based on its phonological status in Kokborok.
v and z fill genuine phonetic gaps — no native Kokborok character covers these sounds adequately. Use them for loanwords and scientific names.
In native Kokborok text, the ph character already covers the [f] sound — consistent with Bengali convention. Use f only if you want to explicitly distinguish it from ph in loanword writing.
Section 5
Yapiri has its own set of 10 digit glyphs for writing numbers. They follow the same decimal positional system as regular numerals — just string them left to right to form larger numbers. Each digit also carries its Kokborok name.
Section 6
Yapiri uses three special marks that work alongside the main alphabet. These are not separate letters — they modify or connect the letters around them.
Placed directly above a vowel to indicate a high or rising tone on that syllable. Kokborok is a tonal language — this mark is how Yapiri captures that distinction in writing. In Latin romanization of Kokborok, the letter h after a vowel conventionally signals high tone. In Yapiri, the high tone mark replaces that convention entirely — the h is omitted and the mark sits over the vowel instead.
Used to mark a repeated syllable within a single word. The word nini (yours) contains the repeated syllable ni. Instead of writing ni twice, write it once and place the reduplication mark over the final letter of the syllable. The mark signals that the syllable is spoken twice. No hyphen is needed for within-word reduplication.
The hyphen is an integral part of the Yapiri writing system — borrowed from global punctuation, but given a specific structural role in the script. When an entire word is repeated consecutively, write the word once, place the reduplication mark over its final letter, then add a hyphen. The hyphen signals that a full repeated word follows — it is never decorative or optional. In the example above, serek (silently) is written once with the mark over k and the hyphen closes the construction.
Section 7
Yapiri follows a small set of clear, consistent rules. Learn these and you can write anything in Kokborok correctly.
Both consonants and vowels must always be written. There are no silent letters and no assumed sounds. If you hear it, write it.
To write /pa/: write (p) followed by (a)
Yapiri is written horizontally, left to right — the same direction as English and Bengali. There is no uppercase or lowercase.
Words are separated by a single space, just as in English. No special word-joiner or separator symbol is needed.
The schwa vowel only appears inside words, never at the beginning. Other vowels can start a word.
The consonant W only ever appears at the very beginning of a word. It will never be found in the middle of a Kokborok word in the Yapiri script.
To mark a high tone syllable, place the high tone mark (◌́) directly over the vowel of that syllable. The Latin convention of using h after a vowel to indicate tone does not apply in Yapiri — the mark replaces it entirely.
High tone on /o/ in bohrok: ́
When a syllable repeats within a word, place the reduplication mark (◌̋) over the last letter of that syllable. Write the syllable only once. No hyphen needed.
nini (yours): ̋
When an entire word is repeated consecutively, place the reduplication mark over the last letter of the first word, then add a hyphen. The hyphen is integral to the script — it signals that the full word that preceded it is repeated.
serek serek (silently): ̋-
Section 8
You now know the full Yapiri alphabet. Here are your first real Kokborok words — greetings you can use every day, written in Yapiri script.
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