Documenting endangered alphabets

Industry Focus Tim Brookes

Three years ago, acting on a notion so whimsi- cal I assumed it was a kind of presenile monoma- nia, I began carving endangered alphabets. The Tdisclaimers start right away. I’m not a linguist, an anthropologist, a cultural historian or even a woodworker. I’m a writer — but I had recently started carving signs for friends and family, and I stumbled on Omniglot.com, an online encyclo- pedia of the world’s writing systems, and several things had struck me forcibly. For a start, even though the world has more than 6,000 Figure 1: Tifinagh. languages (some of which will be extinct even by the time this article goes to press), it has fewer than 100 scripts, and perhaps a passing them on as a series of items for consideration and dis- third of those are endangered. cussion. For example, what does a written language — any writ- Working with a set of gouges and a paintbrush, I started to ten language — look like? The Endangered Alphabets highlight document as many of these scripts as I could find, creating three this question in a number of interesting ways. As the forces of exhibitions and several dozen individual pieces that depicted globalism erode scripts such as these, the number of people who words, phrases, sentences or poems in Syriac, Bugis, Baybayin, can write them dwindles, and the range of examples of each Samaritan, Makassarese, Balinese, Javanese, Batak, Sui, Nom, script is reduced. My carvings may well be the only examples Cherokee, Inuktitut, Glagolitic, Vai, Bassa Vah, Tai Dam, Pahauh of, say, Samaritan script or Tifinagh that my visitors ever see. Hmong, Tifinagh, Mro, Chakma, Dongpa and Maldivian. These At once we’re faced with the fact that what written language have been shown at colleges, universities and libraries across looks like and means now is very, very different from what it the United States, and later in 2012 will be displayed in Eng- looked like and meant in its infancy. When I saw Tifinagh on land, Spain, Thailand and Australia. the Omniglot website, it looked weird and cool. When I tracked The Endangered Alphabets project has raised a series of fas- down photographs of it in its natural habitat, I realized I was cinating questions and dilemmas about language, culture and looking at the most extraordinary writing in the world. the forces that act on each of them. I can’t pretend to have The natural habitat in question is the wall of a cave deep solved any of these riddles, but it may at least be worthwhile in the Sahara desert, at a site called the Wadi Matkhandouch Prehistoric Art Gallery, near Germa in Libya. It’s startling to find any evidence of human presence in such an inhospitable place, so far from what we think of as civilization. And, frankly, the Tifinagh didn’t look much like what we think of as writing. It Tim Brookes is director of the Professional was a meandering string of simple symbols (Figure 1), some of Writing Program at Champlain College in which looked more like mathematics than writing. There was no Burlington, Vermont, and author of the attempt to include pictograms, though in fact the same set of book Endangered Alphabets. rocks and caves has an incredible array of carvings of animals:

16 | MultiLingual October/November 2012 [email protected]

16-20 Brookes #131.indd 16 9/20/12 10:50 AM Industry Focus

giraffes, lions, crocodiles, elephants, ostriches and two cats apparently fight- ing. Or perhaps it represented a kind of code, for this twisting strand of language looked so old and so deep it might just be the DNA of writing. Did I mention that the symbols or letters were in such a strange and vivid red pigment that they looked as if they’d been written in blood? To me, it wasn’t just a series of symbols intended to convey sound and meaning, though in fact these fantastical scraps of writing are actually messages from one caravan to another, giving directions, passing on the location of water. It was, however, like a missing link, the verbal equivalent of the famous prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux in southwestern France. Written language was here, it Figure 2: Carving Inuktitut. said, long before anyone thought to write in straight and level lines. Parsing out scripts wrist, so dependent on perfect equilateral The individual letters had the same When I started the project, though, the triangles, circles and straight lines, none combination of angular purpose yet question of what a script looks like never of which occur in nature. You try draw- prehistoric crudity that challenge the even occurred to me. I could download ing a perfect equilateral triangle some sense at Stonehenge. Something was the representative sample of text from time. As an act of writing, it just doesn’t being born. That writing was a defining Omniglot, which in many cases was make sense. Much later, I would come to moment in human intellectual history: Article One from the Universal Declara- think of this syllabary (the creation of not just a representation of a panorama tion of Human Rights: “All human beings James Evans, a missionary) as a fasci- of hunting, but early, early, unbelievably are born free and equal in dignity and nating and unusual manifestation of a early symbolism. It was like the inven- rights. They are endowed with reason particular impulse to globalism. By bas- tion of meaning itself. and conscience and should act towards ing his script, originally created for the If I sound as if I’m in danger of being one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Cree, partly on geometrical symbols, and carried away here, it’s because those pho- I could simply print this out, take it to in particular by using the conceit that tographs also showed two vital aspects Kinko’s, blow it up to an 11x17 sheet, the same symbol would be pronounced of written language. One, that writing trace the lettering onto my wood using differently when pointing in different is steeped, as if in blood, in the history, carbon paper, and start carving. That was directions, Evans was relying on a kind geography, hydrology, technology, poli- de facto what the writing system looked of Euclidian globalism. tics and economics of its writers. These like, and as I am no linguist and could Certain ideal shapes, he seems to have symbols on the cave wall were not words neither speak nor read any of these lan- believed, were universal, an idea pursued abstracted onto a page. These were words, guages, I was simply following orders. much more recently by Stanislas Dehaene as I say, in the full and complex entangle- Omniglot didn’t have Article One in in his book Reading in the Brain. But ment of their natural habitat. And two, every single script. As I wanted each whereas Dehaene was associating primal that writing shows how profoundly we board to say the same thing, I started visual forms with the firing of individual are pattern-seeking and pattern-making with the scripts I could just pull off the neurons, Evans was creating a script that animals. Nearly everyone who looks at web, meanwhile starting an e-mail cam- had more in common with musical nota- my own lame representation of Tifinagh, paign all over the globe to track down tion or mathematical language than with which I carved on an especially distressed people who could still read and write writing systems that have been invented piece of maple, and for once allowed the Balinese, Sundanese or Bassa Vah. collectively, evolving over time. Each of text to meander like the text on those The first script I carved was Inukti- his syllabic symbols had its own logic, a Saharan walls, is transfixed by it. Again tut — because it was available, and also foundation so strong that even 150 years like Stonehenge, it clearly exhibits pat- because it looked easy. Within minutes I later Inuktitut still has its sharp edges, tern, which in turn represents meaning sensed I had fallen into a trap, possibly unmodified by time and use. And while — but what the hell does it mean? And several traps. First of all, Inuktitut is its users were, by all accounts, delighted our need to identify and understand pat- actually a language; the script is more to have their own script, it was a script tern is so strong that people will stand correctly known as Canadian Aboriginal that owed almost nothing to indigenous looking at my carving for five, even ten Syllabics. Second, it wasn’t easy at all. cultural elements and almost everything minutes, saying how it looks Greek, how I cursed my way through my carving to the ideal forms of classical Greece and it looks alien, how it looks both ancient (Figure 2), wondering why on Earth any Rome. and futuristic at the same time, trying to culture would have a written language By the time I’d finished the Inuktitut puzzle it out. so inimical to the movement of hand and board, which took me a month or more,

www.multilingual.com October/November 2012 MultiLingual | 17

16-20 Brookes #131.indd 17 9/20/12 10:50 AM Industry Focus

Baybayin (Figure 3) on the left and Bassa Vah (Figure 4) on the right.

I was dying to work on a script that his mood. Every character was, in effect, number of (differing) Baybayin typefaces really was a script — that is, was written. an autograph. in the seventeenth century, and some of I had enjoyed carving Chinese so much So I looked through my list of avail- those printed documents survived. because the stroke of the brush obeyed able endangered scripts and went for Carving Baybayin provided me with the same laws of physics and the struc- Baybayin (Figure 3), certainly one of the an entirely different set of problems. The ture of the hand as the movement of the world’s more sinuous and wristy scripts. script didn’t make the slightest effort to gouge. To cut a little deeper, I loved Chi- Here was a perfect example of the battle incorporate the Greek virtues of symme- nese because the very act of writing was between the forces of imperialism and try or Euclid’s ideal forms, but its snaky visible, and was thus commemorated, in the forces of nativism: when the Spanish curves were just so damned thin. Why the characters themselves. Even a casual arrived in the Philippines in the sixteenth would anyone create an alphabet that glance could tell where the brush had century, they were surprised to discover demanded my narrowest gouge and my first touched the paper (or silk), where that the Tagalog already had their own tiniest paintbrush? The answer is a won- it had pressed more or less forcefully, writing system, and though Spanish, in derful illumination of the role of tech- where it lifted off the surface. It was the Latin alphabet, inevitably dominated nology in the development of writing utterly unlike the mechanical stamp of the islands to the virtual extinction of the systems: the Tagalog incised their letters the printing press: the shape of a line indigenous script, the Spanish were nev- in bamboo using the point of a knife, and suggested the writer’s personality, even ertheless interested enough to create a then, to make this ultra-skinny writing more visible, grabbed a handful of ash from the nearest fire and rubbed it into the etched lettering. I was lucky enough to strike up a correspondence with a Canadian, Paul Morrow, the creator of the Unicode Baybayin font, and he made it clear what an approximate business the creation or revival of scripts is bound to be. His font, which has come to be called Tagalog Stylized, is a composite, he explained. “My Stylized font was not based on a single historical example . . . I just wanted a Baybayin font with a con- sistent size and weight from character to character, so I designed my own font based on the way I write the characters, which is, more or less, a combination of the traits of many Baybayin typefaces from the 1600s. Some characters have very different shapes in different old typefaces. I chose the shapes that seemed to be the most common.” The imperial attractions of the Latin alphabet were so powerful that by the twentieth century, anyone in the Phil- ippines with education and ambition

18 | MultiLingual October/November 2012 [email protected]

16-20 Brookes #131.indd 18 9/20/12 10:50 AM Industry Focus

wrote in our global script; Baybayin labary Sequoyah created was cursive, of Christian printed materials. Cherokee had become so associated with igno- well suited to the human hand. Once he was spoken in the home but forbidden rance and the past that it had in effect had successfully demonstrated it to the in schools, and with the advent of radio retreated into the hills, to such an tribal council and the Cherokee were and television, an entire generation of extent that various authorities stated achieving literacy, a missionary named young Cherokee abandoned even the flatly that it was no longer in use. Yet the Reverend Samuel Worcester invested spoken language of their ancestors. the forces of globalism tend to provoke a great deal of his own time, energy and Starting perhaps in the late 1970s and an opposite, if not always equal, force money in creating a Cherokee typeface gaining momentum over the next two of nativism, and by the beginning of that he then put to use to turn out Bibles, decades, a native-rights movement grew the twenty-first century it had become hymnals and prayer books, as well as simultaneously in a number of tribes, cool among young Filipinos to use the the Cherokee included. Unlike every characters of Baybayin. They were not other tribe, though, the Cherokee had the the ones writing Baybayin, though: they opportunity to revive not only their own were the medium on which Baybayin spoken language, but their own script, was written. Baybayin had become the by going back to Worcester’s heritage graphic of choice among tattoo artists. and learning from the printed version. In the process, language had become Relearning a nearly extinct script sets art. According to tattoo artist Christian some unexpected traps. I took my text Cabuay, most of the people getting tat- from the Cherokee Nation’s own website, toos have little or no knowledge of the enlarged it, used carbon paper to transfer original meaning or pronunciation of the syllables to my wood and carved it. the characters. Yet within the past two It was a massive pain. I never wanted years, Philippine bank notes now carry, to see a serif again as long as I lived. below the Latin numbers indicating their A few months later I had the chance to denomination, the Baybayin equivalent, visit the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, printed from Paul Morrow’s own stylized Oklahoma, and took my board with me. Baybayin font. The twisting point of the The first thing I wasn’t expecting was knife in the bamboo has finally returned, that almost nobody, even in the Cherokee by circuitous routes that suggest how Heritage Museum, could read it. They strongly we value the written embodi- The Balinese character for om, recognized the writing as Cherokee, and as ment of our own history and culture, which roughly translates as peace. such they liked it, for the Cherokee nowa- even if we haven’t the foggiest idea what days tend to take great pride in their sylla- it once meant. a newspaper in English and Cherokee bary and have even created exhibitions of Something similar seems to be called the Cherokee Phoenix. art based on its characters. But the percent- happening with Glagolitic, also once Worcester’s type differed consider- age of Cherokee who can actually read and thought to be extinct. Tomislav Bali, a ably from Sequoyah’s cursive: ornate write the script is in the single digits. Croatian historian, explained that the with serifs and dignified with the Greek The second thing I wasn’t expecting last priests to write in Glagolitic might virtues of uprightness and symmetry, it was that I had made two mistakes. The have recently died, but that Glagolitic looks to European eyes simultaneously version on the website was so low resolu- was paradoxically enjoying a revival, oddly familiar and unfamiliar, like Cyril- tion that when I enlarged it, the text pixi- especially in Croatia. The breakup of lic. It’s another example of the ways lated and broke up, and I carved glyphs the former nation of Yugoslavia seems in which the assumptions about what that simply don’t exist in the Cherokee to have created an opportunity for the is “proper” or “correct” in writing are language. This is one of the ironies of my new emerging countries to forge their almost always the embedded assump- project, and frankly of many well-inten- own cultural identities. If this holds true, tions of a dominant culture. tioned linguistic projects: the product we may see the revival of all manner of At this point history intervened. On is in the hands of outsiders like myself apparently moribund scripts, especially the one hand, Sequoyah’s achievement who have no innate sense of direction. in areas where a sense of ethnic identity, was hailed in some quarters as a mighty When for the first time someone sent me long suppressed by a colonial, ideologi- intellectual achievement, and a sign that Article One in handwritten form, I was cal or religious authority, struggles to the Indian could indeed be educated and ecstatic: an endangered alphabet live and the surface and looks for symbols of its civilized. On the other hand, in 1830, the in the wild! Yet when I set to carving it identity and traditions. Indian Removal Act drove most of the (the script in question was Bassa Vah, Cherokee from their ancestral lands, and Figure 4) I realized that he wrote one par- The case of Cherokee the Georgia Guard seized the printing ticular syllabic character in such a range As is fairly well known, Cherokee was press, destroying the Cherokee type. For of ways, none of which corresponded the first Native American language to the next 150 years, Cherokee more or exactly to the Unicode version, that I had have its own self-invented writing sys- less reverted to being a spoken language no idea what to do. Today I would simply tem, created laboriously (and against the once more. Sequoyah’s original script all copy all his variants and let the chips wishes of his tribal council) by Sequoyah but vanished, and the only visible mani- fall where they may, but back then I was between about 1810 and 1821. The syl- festation of Cherokee was the assortment still thinking in my Unicode-consistency

www.multilingual.com October/November 2012 MultiLingual | 19

16-20 Brookes #131.indd 19 9/20/12 10:50 AM Industry Focus

terms, and I wanted a “right” version. printed. Amalia Gnanadesikan, author tations on the Endangered Alphabets I Following the Paul Morrow Principle, I of The Writing Revolution, told me she sometimes ask the audience to pick up created a sort of unhappy medium that wonders whether the printing history of a pen or pencil and write the word rag. had consistency, but neither the range Cherokee may have been as much of a Not only does everyone write each letter nor expressiveness of the original. hindrance as a salvation: it has created a slightly differently, but nobody writes The third thing I wasn’t expecting language that, because of all the serifs, is the initial r in the copperplate way I was was that when I finally found a Cherokee incredibly laborious to write. Those two taught to write it in elementary school, woman who could read the syllabary, sentences took Jumper fourteen minutes. and nobody writes either the a or the g and when she reached my two errors, she It’s too soon to say whether the Chero- the way they appear in most typefaces. didn’t say, “Oh, these are wrong.” She kees’ efforts to revive their language and But that’s the remarkable thing about said, “I don’t know these letters.” That’s script will be successful, or even what language and the way our brains work: when it struck me that without a certain success might mean. Is it a success, for for some reason we can deal with a huge consensus, and without regular commu- example, when a number of the street margin of error. There’s as much skill in nication between people who maintain signs in downtown Tahlequah are writ- imagining what is not there as there is that consensus, a language can simply ten in both Latin and Cherokee, even if in interpreting what is. In a way, then, disintegrate. Just as in the country of the almost nobody can read them and their every language represents on a micro blind, the one-eyed man is king, then in principal purpose is to stimulate cultural scale what we see happening to language the land of the endangered alphabet, the tourism? globally on the macro scale. typo may become gospel. But I’m interested in a broader ques- In recent years the Cherokee Phoenix While I was in Oklahoma I was tion raised by Jumper’s diligent copying. has been revived as a monthly newspaper, determined to find out if the Cherokees’ What makes written language so inter- under the editorship of Bryan Pollard. A efforts to revive their written language esting is that, except in unusual cases remarkable man in many ways, Pollard has included the creation of a cursive, like Cherokee, we don’t have to copy conducted a great deal of his own research hand-friendly version of their syllabary. it slavishly. A written language needs to try to reconstruct Sequoyah’s original I asked one of the Cherokee translators tending, and the fewer people who write cursive Cherokee script, and has then tat- named Ed Jumper (himself a re-learner it, the more skilled attention and tending tooed certain totemic words on his arms of Cherokee) if he’d mind copying it needs. In my project I’ve come across and legs. At present, most articles in the out my two sentences by hand. When scripts that are so endangered that only Cherokee Phoenix are in English because Jumper finished he checked his work a few dozen people still read and write most Cherokee don’t even speak Cherokee, several times, and then showed me. I was them, and when that’s the case, they all let alone read and write it. But each issue stunned. He had copied every base-and- read and write them (to some extent) has half a dozen articles translated into capital serif with the utmost care, had differently. And that’s because we all Cherokee, just to show, or pave, the way. made every syllabic character upright, write (and speak) our own languages Pollard’s goal — his own personal crisp, perfectly articulated. It looked differently anyway. When doing presen- measure of a successful revival of the lan- guage — is one day to run equal column inches in English and Cherokee. Yet, as I said before, one sign of a dying script is that there is no consistency, there are no Discover Wordbee, guardians, and individual nonce words, idiosyncrasies or flat-out mistakes have the online Localization & Translation the same weight as everything else. By this token, perhaps the most encouraging Environment sign of the revival will be when someone writes a letter to the editor, in Cherokee, pointing out a typo. And in fact the Cherokee revival shows that there may well be opportunities for professional translators (and the language industry in general) in the Endangered Alphabets field, even in languages and scripts that almost nobody can read. As with Bay- bayin and Glagolitic, any emerging sense of a national or cultural identity may well result in a growing interest in the traditional language or script. As such, I foresee a modest but fascinating growth Europe & ROW: [email protected] industry, not in conventional translation USA: [email protected] work, but for specialist items associated with tourism, special events, signage, cultural tourism, museums and so on. M

20 | MultiLingual October/November 2012 [email protected]

16-20 Brookes #131.indd 20 9/20/12 10:51 AM Translation Localization Internationalization Language Technology

Global Web Business Region Focuses Industry Resources

MultiLingual — Your information source for language and business.

Subscribe now and see these benefits:

• Eight issues a year plus an annual editorial index/resource directory • An online searchable archive of issues beginning January 2006 • Insightful articles on the topics above as well as managing content, standards, language preservation and much more.

Two ways to subscribe:

1. Digital only. Receive an email when each issue is available. Have access to all the digital issues since 2006. Use the indices or search to find topics, companies and people across issues.

2. Print + Digital. Receive a printed copy of the magazine at your address. Keep the archives on your bookshelf plus take advantage of all the digital features outlined in #1.

SUBSCRIBE NOW! www.multilingual.com/subscribe