By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—While humans absorb spoken language almost by osmosis—we learn to speak and process language through immersion in a spoken environment—we need to be actively taught how to read and write. But the ways in which we visually depict our spoken languages, through symbols, letters, characters, and glyphs, vary wildly across the globe. Speakers of European languages may be used to alphabets based on Roman letters, but there’s an unbelievably rich array of writing systems in use.
“There are around 300 writing systems in the world and 85% to 90% of them are endangered,” said Tim Brookes at his recent presentation at the Brandon Free Public Library.
Brookes is the executive director of the Endangered Alphabets Project, traveling near and far to study writing systems and share his findings with other lovers of language, especially since many of these systems are in danger of being lost through disuse and shrinking native populations.
“Writing is a series of gestures,” he said, offering up a half-dozen examples that he carved by hand onto wooden plaques in order to celebrate their aesthetic beauty. Though the English alphabet is not generally seen as inherently artful—it can be made beautiful through calligraphy, for example—many cultures have developed systems of written language in which aesthetic beauty is a primary characteristic, with graceful loops and flourishes.
And several of the examples that Brookes shared even erase the line between writing as we tend to think of it (as sequences of individual characters that form distinct words) and symbology. For example, in Ghana there is a system of symbols known as “adinkra” that represent concepts rather than specific sounds or words. The symbols are traditionally used on pottery and cloth to convey ideas such as patience, faith, or jealousy, to name just a few. Perhaps the closest we come to this in English is the use of symbols such as the heart to convey “love” or the shamrock to convey “luck.” The current use of emojis in emails and texts to convey ideas might also come close. For example, using the popcorn emoji to mean “excited to watch drama unfold” may be a parallel use of a symbol to convey an entire thought.
Brookes has devoted years of his life to the collection of endangered alphabets and has presented them in a book called “An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets,” in which he showcases these systems from around the world, grouped geographically, and discusses their history and current status.
“Not only is history written by the winner, it’s written in the alphabet of the winner,” he said, noting that many endangered systems belong to ethnic minorities that have been oppressed or persecuted by invaders. For example, the Mayans had a complex writing system that was all but lost after the arrival the Spanish conquistadors, who made a point of destroying the codices that contained the key to understanding the system. The Mayans were forced to adopt the Latin alphabet of the Spanish colonizers.
“A script is a visual reminder of who you are,” noted Brookes.
He offered another example, this time from Java in Indonesia, where the government wanted to reconnect with the history of the island and resuscitated a defunct script called Old Sundanese to replace the Latin alphabet that had been adopted in a fit of Westernization.
Even in our own society, we’re losing alphabets. The cursive writing that pre-digital generations had to learn in school is quickly hurtling toward extinction in the internet era. Though written “in English,” this particular script will likely be indecipherable to coming generations, much as 1700s penmanship can be challenging for us to read today. We just don’t form our letters like that anymore.
Hailing originally from England, Brookes was charming and drily witty. His love of language shone through and kept the audience rapt. His presentation is definitely worth attending for those who love language in all its aspects.
In addition to the atlas, Brookes has written several other books on language and word games (some involving endangered alphabets). You can find out more about his work on endangered alphabets at endangeredalphabets.com and at his personal website timbrookesinc.com.
Thanks to the Brandon Free Public Library, and Dan Fox in particular, for bringing Mr. Brookes to the Brandon community.
