Endangered Alphabets Project

The Endangered Alphabets Project

One unfortunate by product of globalism, especially the global spread of computers, is that many of the world’s languages and their unique alphabets or writing systems are in danger of extinction.

As the world becomes rapidly smaller, these languages, especially in their written form, have been shoved aside by more standardized and internationalized forms–in particular the Roman alphabet, the letterature of the computer.

Some of these scripts are extinct; some have been replaced in everyday use by the Roman, Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic script, and are used only for sacred, secret or ceremonial purposes.

The Endangered Alphabets Project will reproduce twelve of these scripts carved and painted on wood. In each case, the content of the text will be the same namely, Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted in 1948 at the foundation of the United Nations: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Each script will be presented on its own plaque, hand-carved and hand-painted on a slab of Vermont maple, along with (separate) explanatory text. If all goes well (and so far I’m running slightly ahead of schedule) the complete project will first be displayed at the Champlain Mill in Winooski in May 2010 as part of a major arts performance/show presented by the Communication and Creative Media Division of Champlain College in conjunction with a variety of Winooski community groups.

Again, if all goes well, the Endangered Alphabets Project will also include a book, to be published by Champlain College Publishing. The book will tell the stories of these extraordinary languages–and also the story of tracking them down and carving/painting them. I can tell you, you learn a great deal about a language by having to reproduce it in wood.

For examples, click on the name of the script:

Baybayin. A script from the Philippines, used in pre-colonial days to write Tagalog. One of the fascinating things about this script is that as soon as you know it’s an island alphabet, you see in every letter the rise and fall of the sea. Actually, this is a complete illusion, or projection: its thinness and curving lines come from the fact that it was originally carved with the point of a knife in bamboo. (The writer then rubbed ashes into the carved grooves to make the letters stand out better.) It was, in fact, developed from Bugis, which developed on the island of Sulawesi. The fact that it looks completely different is simply a matter of the tools and materials involved. Baybayin, also called “the baybayin,” is not functionally extinct–but its individual letters and forms are undergoing something of a revival as nifty graphic elements by people who have no idea what they mean. Just like us in the post-Tolkien era and the ancient script called runes.
Bugis, or Buginese, is the script of the Bugis people of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It is what’s called a lontara script, from the Malay word lontar, meaning a palm leaf: it was originally cut into palm leaves. Again, the materials affect the shape of the letters: palm-leaf scripts avoid long straight lines, which would cut through the fabric of the leaves, and complete circles, which would leave you with a leaf with a hole. When the Dutch colonized Indonesia they introduced the Latin alphabet–that is, the one all current European languages use–and Bugis fell by the wayside. Now it is used only for writing traditional literature, for personal notes and letters, and for wedding documents.
Cherokee has an extraordinary place in te history of languages. It was the first Native American language to have its own written form, invented against all odds by Sequoyah in the early 19th century. With astonishing rapidity, the Cherokee became literate and a printing press was set up to publish a newspaper in English and Cherokee, along with Bibles, hymnals and prayer books. Almost at once, though, the Cherokee were forced off their traditional lands and spent more than a century literally in the wilderness. Now efforts are being made, especially in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to revive the language, which is currently spoken by only a minority of Cherokee and written by even fewer. It’s a curious feature of Cherokee as a language that it has survived in printed form, thanks to the early adoption of the language to typesetting–and that means that handwritten Cherokee is to an unusual extent an imitation of a formal 19th-century typeface.
Inuktitut is an Inuit language that has a peculiarly symbolic, even mathematical appearance, possibly because the man who created the languages on which it is based was trained in shorthand. His name was James Evans, and he was a remarkable and tragic guy: born in England, he emigrated to Canada, underwent conversion to Methodism and was sent to teach and work among the Cree and Ojibwa. He taught himself their language, then created a written form to use in school and in his missionary work. He was such a friend to the indigenous people of Eastern Canada that his own church and the Hudson’s Bay Company conspired to bring false accusations of improper conduct against him (he was chastised for treating sick Indian children in his house) and drive him back to England, where he died.
Manchu was the official language of China as recently as 200 years ago while the Manchus ruled, but in the nineteenth century Mandarin began to replace Manchu to such an extent that it’s estimated that only 100 people can now speak manchu and only 20 can read and write it. Manchu is based on Old Mongolian, the language of Ghengis Khan. As soon as you know that it’s almost impossible not to see the words as a series of weapons. This is nonsense, of course: turn the page ninety degrees counter-clockwise and you’ll see how similar it is to some of the languages of South Asia.

Here’s the latest board I’ve carved: Mandaic. (Many thanks to Charles Haberl at Rutgers.) First, a board drying in my high-tech system of fume extraction–in other words, on the stove with the extractor fan running:

Next, here’s the finished board on my workbench–i.e. the dining table:

And finally, here’s a close-up to show some of the detail:

For more on the languages and writing systems of the world, click here.

Other examples of my carving. Click on images to see full-size photo: