As I start gathering information for the Word Atlas of Endangered Alphabets, calling on friends and contacts and experts all over the world to amplify the little I know, I’ve also been carving a short text in Samaritan, one of the strangest and most interesting of the world’s writing systems. So strange and interesting, in […]
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 […]
Some amazing news. Thanks to the help of Dan Kaufman of the Endangered Language Alliance, I’ve finally managed to contact someone who knows Bamum. Here’s the backstory. I’ve been looking for someone who can read and write Bamum, a script from one of the many districts of Cameroon, ever since I started the Alphabets more […]
Ever since starting work on the Endangered Alphabets five years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the complicated and often mysterious relationship between a language (written or spoken) and the culture that developed it. But I’ve never had such a potent, vivid and moving illustration of that relationship as I had by watching the Philadelphia Orchestra […]
When the Endangered Alphabets team was at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival this summer in Washington D.C., the tent next to ours was occupied by singers and dancers of the Kalmyk Republic, also known as Kalmykia. The Kalmyks, who originally came west with Genghis Khan and settled in the Caucasus, are a remarkable people in many […]
