Limitations of Tani Lipi

(An extract from the book THE QUINTESSENCE OF APATANI LANGUAGE (PRELUDE) released on 5^th July 2011)

The time, efforts and hard work put up by Mr Tony Koyu to invent Tani Lipi, has to be appreciated to its highest degree. The thought itself of such a noble and innovative idea to devise a script is praiseworthy. The proposed alphabet for Arunachal Pradesh if it is realised in reality can be indeed be a major driving force to promote social harmony and unite all the communities of Arunachal Pradesh. In a multilingual, multicultural state like Arunachal, the contemplation itself of ‘one state, one script’ is so awesome.    

Tani Lipi as claimed is undeniably very easy to learn with a ‘four sentences formula’. I myself learnt it in just a few minutes from “Last Hope”, a VCD by Abo Tani Mission which is dedicated to promote Tani Lipi and Tani Language. The tag line of Tani Lipi in the VCD is promoted as: “Pride and Identity of Arunachal Pradesh”.

 

Quick Memory Four Sentence Formula

Tani Lipi is an alphabetic writing system with eight vowels and eighteen consonants can be written in two imaginary lines. The alphabets are written above the line from left to right. But the alphabets of Tani Lipi are heavily influenced by IPA, Devnagri and Latin alphabets. There are some major drawbacks and self-contradictory statements in the promotions and propagation of Tani Lipi.

Though the intention to create such a script is laudable, the Tani Lipi does not holistically cater to the basic purpose of the script it has been devised for.  Few of the many limitations of Tani Lipi are, firstly, Tani Lipi does not represent all the sounds of the languages existing in Arunachal Pradesh. For instance, sounds like [ts] of Tangsa as in [tswtsa] meaning ‘praise’, [Sh] of Monpa as in [taShi] meaning ‘Tashi (name of a person)’,  /ly/=‘ly’ of Apatani as in [allyo] meaning ‘(alyo) tongue’ etc. are not available.   

Secondly, all the Tibeto–Burman languages with no exception to Tani languages are (almost all) tonal languages. In Tani Lipi there is no representation of the tones at all.

 Thirdly, Tani Lipi is heavily influenced by Roman and Devnagiri alphabets as contradictory to the assertions by the proponents that Roman and Devnagri are not good to represent native languages.

Examples some alphabets of Tani Lipi which are either similar to IPA, Devnagri or Latin alphabets

Fourthly, nasalisation of vowel sound represented by f has been included in list of vowels. Z. is added after the nasalised vowel to mark the preceeding vowel as nasal vowel. Technically, Z. cannot be considered as an independent vowel and hence cannot be categorised under vowels. 

Apart from these, there are many other shortcomings and overlooked features for Tani Languages. Hence, Tani Lipi is inadequate and insufficient to completely represent languages of Arunachal and it needs to be reconsidered with severe investigation and serious research works on the language. 

In wider perspective, if efforts are made to develop a common language for the people of Arunachal Pradesh and if Tani Lipi as resolved has to be introduced as a common script for all, then there has to be a greater deal of brainstorming, serious linguistic works, severe modifications and over all, relentless political will.