Designing New Scripts–an ongoing series

By my calculations, at least a hundred new scripts have been created in the past century. I’m not talking about scripts created for private use, or for use in fiction, film, or television, but scripts intended to give practical visual identity to a language that had previously been using a script imported from, or imposed by, another culture.

This is not only an arduous task, but a hazardous one. At least four people have been killed for creative original indigenous scripts (see my blog post on the subject) and many others have been harassed or imprisoned. All the more reason for recognizing those who make the effort, and take the risk.

The latest to come across my desk is a new script, called Caytu, for the Wolof language of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania. Wolof already has been written in several scripts including Latin, Wolofal, and the indigenously-created Garay, but this new script by Cheikh Talibouya Seck (who grew up speaking Wolof and learned French and then English) differs from all of them.

In a series of emails, he explained, “I decided to do so because I believe that each nation must develop its own cultural elements. It makes the world a more varied, more interesting, less boring place. As for the methods I used, it’s simple : I made several tests, and eliminated everything that seemed too ugly, too complicated, not original enough, until I reached this result. Which remains perfectible. My main goal was to have an easy to use and elegant alphabet.”

Creating a script, while difficult enough, is only the first challenge. Teaching it and getting it accepted and in use is a much longer ordeal, as Assane Faye and his son Souleiman, who have been teaching and promoting the Garay script for decades, know only too well. Most indigenous scripts, alas, struggle for survival–which is why we at the Endangered Alphabets Project include them under our umbrella. As we hear more about Caytu and its progress, we’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Charles Riley adds: “Saliou Mbaye also created one, called Saliww wi, in 2002.” More news on this subject as it comes in!

This post is sponsored by our friends at Typotheque, Letterjuice, and Solidarity of Unbridled Labor.