Designing Endangered Scripts, Half V: Tapiwanashe S Garikayi

The function is broadly supported and it is often automatically enabled in most textual content enhancing & publishing applications, making it appropriate for the intended usage. In our case, it will be changing the sequence of glyphs ‘S & i’ base character sa + vowel i with a single glyph ‘_si’ syllable si. Further demonstrating, to sort my name ‘Tapiwa’, you’d faucet ‘T’ on the keyboard to show the syllable ‘Ta’, faucet ‘P i’ to display syllable ‘pi’ and ‘W’ to get the syllable ‘wa’…et voila! Born in 1951 in Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, Mwangwego visited Paris in 1977, where he discovered the existence of other, non-Latin writing systems.

Welcome to the fourth month-to-month Endangered Alphabets function about calligraphy and kind design–in indigenous and minority writing methods. While Mwangwego faces an uphill battle to achieve widespread adoption in Malawi, it does not stand alone in an isolated case examine. Throughout the continent, varied actions and initiatives have been started by individuals to represent their own individuals and language. Maybe the principle challenges nows to encourage widespread adoption, training, and cementing such writing systems as part of their respective cultural identities.

Solely one book has ever been printed totally written in Mwangwego, and the writing system has not yet been recognised by the ISO commonplace as of 2018. In truth, looking out up references on many of those writing system websites have returned a end result that the area for Mwangwego’s main website was now on sale. Whereas the creator continues to be energetic on Twitter, he does seem to nonetheless be resolved in promoting his writing system into Malawian colleges.

Writing Accessible Copy

When designing fonts supporting writing systems (popularly known as alphabets, though most are not) that aren’t yet encoded into Unicode, one tends to make use of unconventional strategies to get things working. Here is an unorthodox method I personally applied through the process of making a font for the Mwangwego script. The end product was a writing system presenting as an alphasyllabary, written left to right, with vowel marks attached to the bottom proper of each base character.

Mwangwego Script

The first particular person to study the script was Mwandipa Chimaliro;1 ten different college students that 12 months learned the script as well who went on to teach others.1 In 2007 the Mwangwego Club was fashioned whose membership is open to people who have realized the script. Mwangwego script, is amongst the writing techniques not but encoded into the Unicode normal, that means it can’t be displayed on computers, smartphones & the World Wide Internet, as shown above. The function of this font is to allow folks, primarily educators, designers, and linguists, to create teaching, documentation & consciousness materials to maintain the writing system alive within the digital age. These may even be useful submissions to accelerate the Unicode encoding course of, functionality then is necessary contemplating the target group talked about earlier.

Writing In Africa — Mwangwego

• These will require an equally simple however totally different shaping method which I’m still experimenting on.
• After the script was launched, the anticipated authorities support didn’t materialize, so Mwangwego began teaching it himself, putting on lectures and exhibitions.
• However at virtually 26 years since its creation, what kind of progress has this writing system made?
• The story behind the creation of the script, the why, is also one thing I consider & resonate with; the Latin alphabet used to write down Bantu languages does not precisely characterize the unique qualities of our languages.

He theorised that, as there have been words that means ‘write’ in Malawian languages, there may need been indigenous, pre-colonial scripts. This is how far I’ve managed to go, the bottom consonants & syllables may be accurately displayed whereas utilizing the Latin character code-points however, there are still more consonant onsets fashioned by adding non-spacing modifiers and diacritics. These will require an equally easy but completely different shaping technique which I’m nonetheless experimenting on.

It is one level of accomplishment to create a model new, constant and workable writing system; to get it adopted is a completely totally different problem. After the script was launched, the anticipated government support didn’t materialize, so Mwangwego started instructing Mwangwego script it himself, placing on lectures and exhibitions. How to design fonts that help writing techniques which aren’t Unicode encoded. Simply a quantity of years ago I picked a particular curiosity in typeface design and whereas researching the sector, I encountered Afrikan Alphabets a seminal work on indigenous writing systems by Saki Mafundikwa. While looking through Afrikan writing techniques, my attention was drawn to the Mwangwego script, a script from Malawi.

He began his act of creation in 1979; after innumerable modifications and revisions, he considered the script finished and ready for unveiling twenty-four years later, in 2003. Mwangwego was not with out skills as a linguist, speaking and writing Chewa, Tumbuka, Kyangonde, English, French and Portuguese. Some scripts are just like the pebbles in a stream, worn into their shapes over centuries by the collective action of millions of users.

Our mission is to play an lively function in preserving endangered cultures by utilizing their writing methods to create paintings and educational supplies. At the second I’m within the process of creating a font for the Mwangwego script. The course of has been pretty smooth because the inventor continues to be alive so getting source material for the for research and letter-form construction steerage usually are not limiting factors. When accomplished, the font can be utilized for instructional purposes and in selling the script. The story behind the creation of the script, the why, can be one thing I consider & resonate with; the Latin alphabet used to write Bantu languages does not accurately characterize the distinctive qualities of our languages. A melange of all that is the driving factor of my curiosity in the script.

Residence to a number of Bantu languages, like Chichewa, Malawian Lomwe and Lambya, Malawi sure boasts a selection of languages within the Bantu language group. “The script is also included in primers and learning exercise supplies for students. As of mid-2024, another cohort of teachers are being skilled. More than 2,000 individuals have been taught the script, he said, a few of whom are actually appearing as teachers in their turn. If a script exists only in historical documents, engravings, and inscriptions, it’s all too easy to imagine it’s no longer in use, and the tradition that created it has also been misplaced.

Chichewa syllables, like many different Bantu languages, and languages spoken in Malawi, have a quantity of modifications to consonant sounds. They may be plain, with no modifications, at all, labialised (followed by a -w sound), or palatalised (followed by a -y sound). Additionally, consonants can be pre-nasalised, such because the syllable ndi., All of those sound modifications aren’t represented within the alphasyllabary, and so a number of additions need to be made to make sure Mwangwego represented all of those sounds. These came within the form of extra diacritics positioned earlier than the syllable character, which can range from a horizontal line to represent labialisation, to 2 dots indication aspiration. The ‘rlig’ (Required Ligatures) OpenType function replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph.

As a designer, I try to develop work that speaks to each me and others in regards to the magnificence (runako) that exists in Afrikan societies. In my design course of, instead of jumping on to the internet to research, I look around my environment getting inspiration from nature and everything I lay my eyes on. There is so much to admire, from hut patterns, stone sculptures, wild animals, traditional musical devices and so forth. Getting inspiration from all this, I breathe life into the designs (especially typefaces) in order that Afrikan concepts, innovation and life-style are visible. Our subsequent writing system takes us to Southern Africa, notably in a landlocked country called Malawi.