Pau Cin Hau

The Pau Cin Hau alphabet was created to write the Tedim language spoken in Myanmar. Specifically, it was created to convey the teachings of Pau Cin Hau, a Tedim speaker who founded the Laipian religion. According to Pau Cin Hau, he had a dream in 1902 in which a logographic script (later named Pau Cin Hau Logographs) was revealed to him. The logographic script was used until 1932, when it was revised and the character repertoire significantly reduced to produce the alphabet.

The alphabet was used to write both Laipian and, later, Christian literature. However, its close associations with the Laipian religion meant that its use diminished with the introduction of Christianity to the region, and the decline of Laipian.

The alphabet consists of fifty-seven characters: thirty-seven letters and twenty ‘tone’ marks. Some of the tone marks actually function as punctuation, and some represent the glottal stop, or glottal variants of tones. Some characters represent sounds which do not exist in Tedim but do exist in neighbouring languages, which suggests that the script may have been intended for wider use.

The Pau Cin Hau alphabet is written from left to right with spaces between words.