IV. SCRIPT AND SPELLING:

Kom does not have a script of its own. They use Roman script with some modifications to suit their language and their needs. The alphabet has 33 characters in capital and small letters. They also use the convention of using capital letters for proper nouns and in the first letter of the sentence. There are also diacritic marks such as a dot below the letters to indicate retroflex ion, ^ to indicate length of the vowels, etc.

Capital letters

A	Â	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	Î
J	K	L	M	N	O	Ô	P	Q	R	S
T	Ṭ	U	V	W	X	Y	Z

Small letters

a	â	b	c	d	e	ê	f	g	h	i
î	j	k	l	m	n	o	Ô	ō	p	q
r	s	t	ţ	u	û	v	w	x	y	z 

[Hm] as in Hmun (place) and Hmangte (name of a clan) and also the occurrence of [Hl] as in Hla (song), Hlam (path), are common in Kom.

Kom has long and short vowels. Short vowels are a, e, i, o, u and the long vowels are â, ê, î, ō, û. The usage of the long and the short vowels are as follows.

Symbol  ‘ō ’ in Kom represents  [ u ]. As in /khumE/
Symbol  ‘u ’ in Kom represents [ u ]. As in /kum/.
Symbol  ‘e’ in Kom represents the sound [e]. As in /pek/.
Symbol  ‘ê’ in Kom represents [e:]. As in /ne:mpi/, /ne:mnu/.
Symbol  ‘û ’ in Kom represents [ u: ]. As in/u:msek/.
Symbol  ‘i ’ in Kom represents [ i ]. As in /thiŋ/.
Symbol  ‘î ’ in Kom represents [ i:]. As in /thi:ŋ/.
Symbol  ‘a’ in Kom represents [a ].  As in /takdam/.
Symbol  ‘â’ in Kom represents [a:]. As in /a:not/.
Symbol  ‘ô’ in Kom represents [o:]. As in /tloso:t/.
Symbol  ‘o’ in Kom represents [o]. As in /pho/.