Ho Kaji

The suitability of different scripts is already discussed in the previous post. T his Post is to compare the two main scripts currently in use for Ho, Warang Chiti and Devanagari. SIMPLICITY In terms of orthography, Warang Chiti is far more simpler than Devanagari. Even the shape of Warang Chiti letters is not as complex as Devanagari. Devanagari Hindi alphabet has 49 letters whereas Warang Chiti has 32. Devanagari has many letters that are not used in Ho while missing frequently used ones. This make writing Ho in Devanagari cumbersome. Though Devanagari is a phonetic script, there are problems while using it for Ho. Like there is always a confusion whether it should be तना or ताना, सकम or साकाम or सकाम. This problem is not easy to solve as all the spellings look reasonable. However, using Warang Chiti is simple, since the script was specifically invented for Ho. It has all letters required for Ho and the shapes of the letters provide mnemonics to remember them.  AESTHETIC

The Ho language has been written in various scripts in different regions. In this article, I will mainly discuss the suitability of various scripts and how they represent speech sounds of the Ho language. DEVANAGARI Since Hindi is the language of administration and the lingua franca in the principle Ho area, Devanagari is the obvious choice to write Ho. Children learn Hindi till class 10, it is the only language they are literate in, apart from some English. Devanagari has been used to write books, movie banners and signboards. For official purpose, only Devanagari is used, like in Board exams and Government awareness posters. When it comes to writing Ho, Devanagari alphabet has almost all the letters required to represent Ho phonology. The nasal sounds /ŋ/ and / ɲ / , which occur frequently can be represented accurately as ङ and ञ respectively. Glottalized /ɖ/ and /b/ are special sounds in Ho which Devanagari lacks letters to represent, but there is no need to distingui