Designing Endangered Scripts, Part V: Tapiwanashe S Garikayi

Residence to a number of Bantu languages, like Chichewa, Malawian Lomwe and Lambya, Malawi sure boasts a variety of languages in the Bantu language group. “The script can be included in primers and studying exercise supplies for faculty kids. As of mid-2024, another cohort of lecturers are being skilled. Extra than 2,000 people have been taught the script, he mentioned, some of whom are now acting as teachers of their turn. If a script exists only in historic documents, engravings, and inscriptions, it is all too easy to imagine it is no longer in use, and the tradition that created it has additionally been misplaced.

Welcome to the fourth month-to-month Endangered Alphabets characteristic Mwangwego script about calligraphy and kind design–in indigenous and minority writing techniques. While Mwangwego faces an uphill battle to realize widespread adoption in Malawi, it does not stand alone in an isolated case study. Throughout the continent, numerous movements and tasks have been started by people to represent their very own individuals and language. Perhaps the principle challenges now is to encourage widespread adoption, schooling, and cementing such writing techniques as a half of their respective cultural identities.

Decolonizing Typography: Creating A Font For Afrikan Writing Methods

As a designer, I try to develop work that speaks to both me and others about the beauty (runako) that exists in Afrikan societies. In my design course of, instead of jumping on to the internet to research, I go searching my environment getting inspiration from nature and every little thing I lay my eyes on. There is a lot to admire, from hut patterns, stone sculptures, wild animals, conventional musical instruments etc. Getting inspiration from all this, I breathe life into the designs (especially typefaces) so that Afrikan ideas, innovation and lifestyle are visible. Our next writing system takes us to Southern Africa, notably in a landlocked country known as Malawi.

Only one guide has ever been published entirely written in Mwangwego, and the writing system has not but been recognised by the ISO standard as of 2018. In truth, looking out up references on many of those writing system websites have returned a result that the domain for Mwangwego’s major web site was now on sale. Whereas the creator remains to be energetic on Twitter, he does seem to still be resolved in selling his writing system into Malawian faculties.

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• When accomplished, the font can be utilized for academic functions and in promoting the script.
• The finish product was a writing system presenting as an alphasyllabary, written left to right, with vowel marks connected to the underside right of each base character.
• Mwangwego was not without qualifications as a linguist, talking and writing Chewa, Tumbuka, Kyangonde, English, French and Portuguese.
• Residence to a quantity of Bantu languages, like Chichewa, Malawian Lomwe and Lambya, Malawi positive boasts a variety of languages in the Bantu language group.
• With additional revisions, the writing system was completed in 2003.

Chichewa syllables, like many other Bantu languages, and languages spoken in Malawi, have a number of modifications to consonant sounds. They can be plain, with no modifications, at all, labialised (followed by a -w sound), or palatalised (followed by a -y sound). Moreover, consonants may additionally be pre-nasalised, such because the syllable ndi., All of those sound modifications are not represented within the alphasyllabary, and so a quantity of additions have to be made to make sure Mwangwego represented all of those sounds. These got here within the form of additional diacritics placed before the syllable character, which can vary from a horizontal line to characterize labialisation, to 2 dots indication aspiration. The ‘rlig’ (Required Ligatures) OpenType characteristic replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph.

It is one stage of feat to create a new, constant and workable writing system; to get it adopted is an entirely different challenge. After the script was launched, the anticipated authorities assist did not materialize, so Mwangwego started teaching it himself, placing on lectures and exhibitions. How to design fonts that support writing systems which aren’t Unicode encoded. Just a few years in the past I picked a particular curiosity in typeface design and whereas researching the sphere, I encountered Afrikan Alphabets a seminal work on indigenous writing techniques by Saki Mafundikwa. Whereas wanting by way of Afrikan writing systems, my consideration 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 completed 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 like the pebbles in a stream, worn into their shapes over centuries by the collective action of hundreds of thousands of users.

He was put in the headman of his village as Yaphet Mwakasungula IV on December 29, 1997.