With over 1.4 billion people, and being the most populous country in the world, India is an incredibly diverse place. With its diversity, also comes many languages, and writing systems used to write them. However, most of these writing systems have a similar pattern. Each consonant letter carries its own inherent vowel, and its vowel … Continue reading India’s only true indigenous alphabet (recognised as an official script)
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Writing in Africa — Mwangwego
Our next writing system takes us to Southern Africa, particularly in a landlocked country called Malawi. Home to several Bantu languages, like Chichewa, Malawian Lomwe and Lambya, Malawi sure boasts a variety of languages in the Bantu language group. The origins of Mwangwego trace back to linguist Mr Nolence Moses Mwangwego, born in Zambia to … Continue reading Writing in Africa — Mwangwego
Yet another vertical writing system
In a previous post, we have introduced one of the writing systems that is written vertically, but read horizontally. But what if I told you that there are more writing systems that sort of use similar writing directions? That is right, because today, we will dive into yet another one of these writing systems, that … Continue reading Yet another vertical writing system
The story of the cedilla
This diacritic we will cover today will bother a lot of font developers who want to make a sans-serif font, basically a typeface that lacks any sort of protruding bits at the end of a stroke. These projecting features are called "serifs", and here, the one bothersome bit is called the cedilla, a diacritic mark … Continue reading The story of the cedilla
The writing system that resembles Arabic, but is not
The Arabic abjad has its influences throughout many parts of the world. From the Urdu script for, well, Urdu, and Persian script for Farsi, to the Jawi script for Bahasa Melayu, there are many letters added to the 28 original letters of Arabic from these respective languages. However, these scripts will not be the focus … Continue reading The writing system that resembles Arabic, but is not
Writing Japanese — H-hentaigana?
Ok. No, it is not what you are probably thinking. Hentaigana has nothing to do with perverted stuff so stereotypical in popular culture. This hentai we are talking about here pertains to this thing called 変体, or variant forms, and that hentaigana, or 変体仮名, basically means the historical variants of the currently used hiragana script. … Continue reading Writing Japanese — H-hentaigana?
The mystery of our alphabetical order
I am pretty sure you know how the alphabet song goes, from any language that uses some form of the Latin alphabet. Something that always intrigues me is why the alphabet, the English one at least, is ordered this way, and not any other sequence. Was it because the ABC song only sounds appropriate when … Continue reading The mystery of our alphabetical order
The language with four-cornered letters — Bugis (ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ) and the Lontara (ᨒᨚᨈᨑ) script
Indonesia is amazingly diverse. Hundreds of languages and cultures span the archipelago from Sumatra to the western half of New Guinea, encompassing more than 17 thousand islands. While Bahasa Indonesia is the most widely spoken language, by 80% of the entire country's population, many other Austronesian languages are spoken too, and more than 270 languages … Continue reading The language with four-cornered letters — Bugis (ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ) and the Lontara (ᨒᨚᨈᨑ) script
The Language Closet 