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A script commissioned for an empire.
Also known as: Mongol square script, Yuan official script
The script created under Kublai Khan to write every language of the Mongol empire in one alphabet.
Writes Mongolian, Chinese, Tibetan and other languages of the Yuan empire in a single alphabet.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Commissioned as a universal script for a multilingual empire and abandoned within a century of its creation, which makes it the clearest case in the catalogue of a script failing for political rather than linguistic reasons.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Its square-block stacking is a plausible influence on the Korean Hangul syllable block, though the connection is argued rather than documented.
The influence on Hangul is a scholarly proposal, not an established derivation.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Letters built into square blocks stacked vertically, derived from Tibetan forms and set in even columns.