Tim Brookes
Tim Brookes is the founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project. Born in England, he now lives in Vermont with an outspoken cat, a fearless rabbit, and a lot of wood.
Of Course We Should Digitize Every Minority Script — Right?
It’s easy to assume that script digitization is always a means of liberation and access. But for some minority scripts, digitization would be unhelpful or even harmful to the people who use them. The author of this article calls for caution as the language services industry rushes to create digital fonts for every writing system on Earth.
Alice Mazzilli and the Calligraphy of the Wall
Alice Mazzilli practices a graffiti-like visual art form called jamigraphy — or jamming with calligraphy — that combines writing, painting, music, and movement. This article tells her story while exploring the value and beauty of imperfect handwriting.
Why Write by Hand?
The author argues that writing by hand (versus typing) leads to increased learning, greater creativity, and even better health — benefits that we are in danger of losing in our haste to adopt digital tools.
Written in Stone
The author interviews a third-generation stone carver about creating calligraphy in the hardest material possible. Their conversation touches on history, art, and the future of manual craftsmanship in the United States.
Ritual, Identity, and the Body
Philippine cultural advocate Kristian Kabuay describes his artistic journey from the United States to the Philippines and back, and from graffiti to martial arts to batok, a traditional tattooing practice that incorporates body, identity, and language.
News by Hand
Why would anyone handwrite a newspaper? The Musalman — a four-page Urdu paper that has been written, every day, by hand ever since it was founded in 1927 — suggests that the act of writing by hand (and its sister act, the act of reading handwriting), incorporates far more than the mere transmission of information.
The Nomad Script
Tim Brookes discusses the survival of the Mongolian language and script, the decrease in their use over the past century, and the art and beauty of Mongolian calligraphy. He highlights the work of Tamir Samandbadraa Purev, an award-winning calligrapher who has dedicated his life to preserving his native script.
Poetry in Bamboo
Bamboo carving is a traditional writing technique of the indigenous Mangyan people of the Philippines. Tim Brookes describes how ancestral poetry is inscribed onto the plant, highlighting the culture’s connection with nature and spirituality.
Writing Joyfully
While the traditional Ranjana script is recognized and respected in Nepal, most people can’t read or write it due to centuries of restriction and oppression. Now, thanks to local efforts at teaching calligraphy, it’s making a comeback.
Kulitan and the Fight for Revival
Tim Brookes poses the question, “How can a script that serves a language spoken by millions be endangered?” At issue is the traditional Kulitan script, employed by the Kapampangan people of the Philippines. Brookes discusses its decline, efforts at revival, and what’s at stake.
Learning Multiple Languages: Good. Learning Multiple Scripts: Better?
A linguist studying a newly developed script in Africa noticed that people’s willingness to learn it depended on whether they grew up monoscriptal — using only one writing system — or polyscriptal. Tim Brookes ponders the reasons for this difference and asks for perspectives from readers.
Dashing off a Letter
Dwindling numbers of people in the Western world write in cursive. Using his own signature as an example, Tim Brookes makes the case for this flowing, letter-to-letter writing to enable speed, comfort, and even grace.
Free Online Event to Highlight the World’s Endangered Scripts
World Endangered Writing Day brings together scholars who study writing with community activists who are trying to revive their cultures.
Localization — to the Letter
Localization — to the Letter
Launching World Endangered Writing Day
BY TIM BROOKES
Given that we humans have spent much of our existence trying to overrun, conquer,...
The Ambassadors
Brookes uses two examples of health crises while traveling to illustrate the need for high-quality translation services in hospitals around the world. While encouraging developers to make hospital-specific apps, Brookes also argues that only real language professionals can provide the initiative and compassion that is so valuable when a person’s health is on the line.
The Euro of Gibberish
Dive into the early days of Google Translate, where machine translation was more Wild West than refined art. Brookes reminisces about a time when translated text resembled a rollercoaster of linguistic twists and turns, more baffling than enlightening. Join him on a humorous exploration of the challenges and charm of Google's early attempts to bridge languages, as he discovers its unintentional creation of a universal gibberish.
Forked Tongue
Chances are, dear reader, you are in the language industry — as a translator, teacher, localizationer, game industrialist, and so on. There’s also a good chance your mother tongue is not English. If either or both are the case, you are going to love this column, especially as it comes with a free game.
Art or Signage?
When I am about to start a carving, I givemuch thought to not only what to carvebut how to carve it.There are two diverging paths that I canfollow when I want to highlight and promoteand preserve and, if possible, revitalize it. (Bear in mind thatin virtually every case, I'm working in a script that I can't read andI can't write.
Lessons from Okinawa
Writing has many, many dimensions of meaning that go beyond representing the sounds of spoken language — and my work with the Endangered Alphabets Project has put me in the privileged position of working with cultures more aware of this fact than us in what I’ll loosely call the West.
Oriental Penmanship
Recently, as is my wont, I threw out into the interwebs an inquiry about the current state of Mahajani and other merchant/commercial scripts of South Asia. By far the most valuable response came from Christopher Ray Miller, a linguist from Montreal and an expert in South Asian scripts, who sent me such a barrel of valuable materials via Dropbox that it took 25 minutes to download.
Red List Quandary
As you may know, in July 2021 the Endangered Alphabets Project launched our Red List initiative. Our aim: to identify every script currently in use in the world find out which are healthy and which are in danger of extinction.
Antiquated Premiere
Inspired by the narration and closed captions of a soccer game played between the US Women’s National Team and New Zealand, Tim Brookes takes a look at word games and writing exercises throughout the ages in the latest installment of his column “The Red List.”
Sankofa
In his latest column for MultiLingual, Tim Brookes of the Endangered Alphabets Project decides to take a look at how ChatGPT fares when it comes to chatting about endangered alphabets. Testing it out with his friend Olgierd Uziemblo, he’s less than impressed with the results — learn why in this column.
The Shelfie
When COVID arrived, or more exactly when Zoom arrived shortly afterwards and we all invited the world on a video tour of selected parts of our homes, we all faced interesting design/disclosure questions. What did we want the world to see, and not to see?