Welcome to the fourth monthly Endangered Alphabets feature about calligraphy and type design–in indigenous and minority writing systems. Here’s the point. If a script exists only in historical documents, engravings, and inscriptions, it is all too easy to assume it is no longer in use, and the culture that created it has also been lost. […]
It is still remarkably rare for scholars to get involved in creating and promoting new writing systems, so it seems all the more worthwhile to pass along to you an article by Stephen Morey, an Australian scholar and expert in the Tai languages and scripts of South China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. And as […]
Welcome to the third monthly Endangered Alphabets feature about calligraphy and type design–in indigenous and minority writing systems. Here’s the point. If a script exists only in historical documents, engravings, and inscriptions, it is all too easy to assume it is no longer in use, and the culture that created it has also been lost. […]
Last month, we started a new monthly Endangered Alphabets feature about calligraphy and type design–in indigenous and minority writing systems. Here’s the point. If a script exists only in historical documents, engravings, and inscriptions, it is all too easy to assume it is no longer in use, and the culture that created it has also […]
Creating an alphabet may seem like a harmless pastime, and author-designers inventing conscripts for science fiction/alternative-reality novels or television series are probably only at risk of eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome. As soon as writing has a political or religious purpose, though, things change. It’s a sign of how powerful a force writing can be […]
This month, I’m starting a new monthly Endangered Alphabets feature that will be launched on this blog, and archived in the relevant page of the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets. It’s all about calligraphy and type design–in indigenous and minority writing systems. Here’s the point. If a script exists only in historical documents, engravings, and inscriptions, […]
This time last year I was getting ready to set up an Endangered Alphabets carving exhibition in the Vermont State House–an exhibition whose flagship carving was this tribute to the Native people of the region, the Abenaki. It says “People of the Dawn Lands”–the Abenaki name for themselves–in Abenaki. A lot has happened since then. […]
Our latest Carving of the Week video features the stunning Adinkra symbol system. You can check it out HERE. As always, I wish I knew more than I do, or than I sound as if I do. Anyone who has studied Adinkra–I’d love to hear from you!
What a pleasure and a privilege to deliver the latest of my Abenaki carvings to Shirly Hook, one of the Council of Chiefs of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation. This is the fifth carving I’ve done and donated to the Abenaki people, whose language is one of the most endangered in […]
Today, August 9, is Indigenous Peoples Day. The Endangered Alphabets Project works to support indigenous peoples all round the world, but I must confess that for the first few years of the project I knew nothing about the indigenous peoples living right here around me. (I was going to write “In my own back yard,” […]
