COMING SOON: my Kickstarter to raise money to create board games in endangered alphabets for indigenous kids. The image in this photo is one of my series of faux-Scrabble tiles, in Sundanese, from western Java. The tiles were recently on display at the LocWorld34 conference in Barcelona and at Mundolingua in Paris–a big hit. Seriously, […]
The ten tiles of the Endangered Alphabets Board Game, just needing a few coats of finish and a professional photo shoot. These tiles, each 10″x12″, are for exhibition; the aim is to use them as a springboard to raise $5,000 to make alphabet board games in endangered languages for indigenous schoolchildren in Bangladesh. Watch out […]
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve been seeing hints and clues about my next series of carvings, and here are the first prototypes: Scrabble tiles in endangered alphabets. Here’s my thinking: After my very serious and poignant Mother Tongue series, I wanted to do something more playful, but still full of intent. After all, it’s the […]
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 […]
