Keyboards for the Endangered Idu Mishmi Language
Akhilesh Kakolu Ramarao
TL;DR
The paper tackles the lack of digital input tools for the endangered Idu Mishmi language, despite the 2018 Idu Azobra orthography. It presents two offline keyboard solutions—a mobile Android implementation and a Windows desktop version—developed in collaboration with the Idu Mishmi Cultural and Literary Society to ensure community control and relevance. Key contributions include handling a rich diacritic inventory with multi-codepoint sequences, a privacy-preserving, cross-platform design, and a replicable deployment model for other communities. The work advances language revitalization by enabling native orthography usage in daily communication and formal settings, while maintaining data sovereignty and open-source accessibility.
Abstract
We present a mobile and desktop keyboard suite for Idu Mishmi, an endangered Trans-Himalayan language spoken by approximately 11,000 people in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Although a Latin-based orthography was developed in 2018, no digital input tools existed to use it, forcing speakers into ad-hoc romanizations that cannot represent the full writing system. Our keyboards comprise two tools: (1) an Android mobile keyboard, published on the Google Play Store and actively used in teacher training programs, and (2) a Windows desktop keyboard currently undergoing community testing. Both tools support the complete Idu Mishmi character inventory, including schwa, retracted schwa, nasalized vowels, and accented forms. Both operate fully offline with zero network permissions, addressing connectivity constraints and data sovereignty concerns. We describe the design, implementation, and deployment as a replicable model for other endangered language communities.