Check out the new interview
It’s a rare interviewer who asks me questions I’ve never been asked before: https://soundcloud.com/dougarobinson/saving-endangered-alphabets-with-tim-brookes.
It’s a rare interviewer who asks me questions I’ve never been asked before: https://soundcloud.com/dougarobinson/saving-endangered-alphabets-with-tim-brookes.
Two carvings for my forthcoming exhibition at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, on International Mother Language Day. Both say “mother tongue,” the top one in Thai Lanna, the lower one in Mandaean. The woods are monkey pod and olive respectively. The exhibition will open the day before International Mother Language Day–namely, February 20th–and will be […]
At the end of my recent Kickstarter campaign I posted a photo of a carving I had been working on over the last 48 hours, which read “Sunrise” in classic Mongolian vertical bichig script. My Facebook friend Kellar Alsup asked me why I carve anything in bichig script, given that it has official recognition in […]
One of the touching and altogether wonderful features of my current Kickstarter campaign is the fact that a number of linguists, recruited by the indefatigable Naoki Watanabe and working through Facebook, have translated my overall project description into other languages. As someone who after a lifetime of writing has had only one book translated into […]
This is why I love what I do. Early this morning Jerson Partible contacted me asking me if I want to carve something in Tagbanwa. I had never even heard of Tagbanwa. Within a couple of hours he had sent me this. It’s the phrase “mother tongue,” and it will be part of my exhibition […]
Our good friend (and member of the Endangered Alphabets Advisory Board) David Crystal has released yet another book–perhaps a little more tongue-in-cheek than his Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, but surely destined to be another classic. Here is the press release:
I’m going to be showing and talking about a selection of Endangered Alphabets carvings in the near future–at the Lyceum in Bedford, Massachusetts at NOON on Sunday, May 15th, in Room 202. If you’re nearby, please swing by and say hello! Tim P.S. Thanks to the citizens of Springfield, Vermont, for a great turnout to […]
A few months ago I was contacted by Ivan Brenes, an English-language instructor at Osaka University, Japan, who told me about a minority culture I’d never heard of: the Ainu. According to the Ainu Museum website, the word “Ainu” means “human.” Ainu culture flourished in the northern islands of Japan, especially Hokkaido, from about 1400-1700. As the […]
Today is International Mother Language Day. Here are photos of Harvard students observing and celebrating the day with copies of our poster, based on my Mother Tongue poster that has been shipped to Bangladesh for display in Chittagong. Photos by Maung Nyeu, our collaborator on the Our Golden Hour education project. Poster design by Alec […]
My apologies if you’ve heard this through another channel, but I wanted to let you know what’s happening with my current Kickstarter campaign. The original goal was for a short, sweet campaign to raise $1,000 so I could do a carving celebrating Mother Tongue Day (February 21st) and send it to Bangladesh, where there are […]