Millennium-old Beary language gets a script

Mangaluru: For a millennium, Beary language, spoken predominantly by Muslims along the Western Coast of India, has not had a script, but nine writers in the language have succeeded in putting together a script that is synchronous with the Unicode technology.
The initiative to develop a script for the nearly 1,000-year-old language was an initiative of the Karnataka Beary Sahitya Academy.Rahim Uchil, chairman of the academy, said that the script developed for Beary did not resemble the alphabet of any other language.
Unveiling the new script to the world on Friday, Uchil said that the academy was conferring with Google to launch an app that would allow for the download of the script on to mobile phones and computers. “We want to popularise the script through online platforms. The academy has submitted a proposal to the state government seeking introduction of Beary as a third language for students of class VI and above. It will initially be taught to schoolchildren with Kannada script, and they will later be taught the new letters,” Uchil said.
Uchil said that the Beary script had 13 vowels and 33 consonants, in addition to its own numbers. Pointing out that Beary was a Dravidian tongue spoken by nearly two million people across the globe, he added, “It serves as a vital link to Tulu, Malayalam, Kannada, Konkani and other languages. We will not impose the new script on the Beary speakers. Use of Kannada script will continue alongside efforts to popularise the new alphabet. To begin with, we will publish a Beary calendar ‘Naalkanakk’ for 2021.”
Abdul Rasheed Zaini Kamil Sakhafi, Aboobakker Siddiq, Haider Ali, Abdul Razak Ananthady, AK Kukkila, Muhammed Fouzeed, Abdul Samad Bava, Abdul Rahiman Kuthethoor and Hamza Malar were the nine writers who developed the script.