Spoken languages can die. When the last speaker passes on, unless extensive recordings have been made, not only the vocabulary but the tones, the emphases, the rhythms and the syntax, the internal cohesion and structure of the language, can be impossible to reconstruct. Written languages bare different. The linkages between sound and symbol may be […]
As some of you know, I’ve launched the Red List initiative—the effort by the Endangered Alphabets Project to identify every script in current use and assess to what degree each one is thriving or threatened. Much of what we’re finding is highly-focused and local—fascinating scripts we never knew existed. But we’re also making some even more […]
Here at the Endangered Alphabets Project we are always glad to hear news of new font developments in indigenous/minority scripts, and the latest such news concerns a collaboration between Typotheque and indigenous communities in Canada. The Syllabics Project (see the mini-documentary here) involves launching a series of Unified Canadian Syllabics fonts that support Indigenous language […]
Back at my desk, so to speak, after four weeks of fundraising, the first order of business is to bring to your attention a very unusual but significant form of graphic language, both highly endangered and a great illustration of the intimate relationship between graphic systems and their culture of origin: Okinawan women’s hand-tattoos. The […]
