The Tai Le script (ᥖᥭᥰ ᥘᥫᥴ, ), or Dehong Dai script, is a Brahmic script used to write the Tai Nüa language spoken by the Tai Nua people of south-central Yunnan, China. (The language is also known as Nɯa, Dehong Dai and Chinese Shan.) It is written in horizontal lines from left to right, with spaces only between clauses and sentences. The Tai Le script has a long history (700–800 years) and has used several different orthographic conventions. Traditional script The traditional Tai Le script, known as Lik Tho Ngok (, "bean sprout script") by the Tai Nua, is a Brahmic script that is found in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan, China. Names The Lik Tho Ngok script is known by a variety of names, including the Old Tay or Old Dai script, Lik Tay La/Na (, "Northern Tay script") and Lik To Yao (, "long script"). History The Lik Tho Ngok script used by the Tai Nuea people is one of a number of "Lik Tai" scripts or "Lik" scripts used by various Tai peoples in northeastern India, northern Myanmar, southwestern Yunnan, and northwestern Laos. Evidence suggests that the Lik scripts have a common origin from an Old Burmese or Mon script prototype before the fifteenth century, most probably in the polity of Mong Mao. The Lik Tai script featured on a 1407 Ming dynasty scroll exhibits many features of the Burmese script, including fourteen of the nineteen consonants, three medial diacritics and the high tone marker. According to the scholar Daniels, this shows that the Tai borrowed from the Burmese script to create their own script; the Lik Tai script was derived from the Burmese script, as it could only have been created by someone proficient in Burmese. Daniels also argues that, unlike previously thought, the Lik Tho Ngok script is not the origin of the other Lik Tai scripts, as the 1407 Lik Tai script shows greater similarity to the Ahom script, which has been attested earlier than the Lik Tho Ngok script. Other "Lik" scripts are used for the Khamti, Phake, Aiton and Ahom languages, as well as for other Tai languages across Northern Myanmar and Assam, in Northeast India. The Lik scripts have a limited inventory of 16 to 18 consonant symbols compared to the Tai Tham script, which possibly indicates that the scripts were not developed for writing Pali. It