Art & Artifice, Language & Logs
20/06/11 16:14
We love this art project underway in Vermont, where a gentleman whose passion runs toward preserving endangered alphabets is in the process of creating a sculpture which features a poem transcribed into languages including Baybayin, Inuktitut, Bugis, Mandaic, Tifinagh and Nom.
He rightly notes
“Writing has become so dominated by a small number of global cultures that those 6,000-7,000 languages are written in fewer than 100 alphabets. Moreover, at least a third of the world’s remaining alphabets are endangered–-no longer taught in schools, no longer used for commerce or government, understood only by a few elders, restricted to a few monasteries or used only in ceremonial documents, magic spells, or secret love letters.
While we acknowledge that it is the nature of language to change, we agree that something essentially human is lost when a form of expression passes from this world.
He rightly notes
“Writing has become so dominated by a small number of global cultures that those 6,000-7,000 languages are written in fewer than 100 alphabets. Moreover, at least a third of the world’s remaining alphabets are endangered–-no longer taught in schools, no longer used for commerce or government, understood only by a few elders, restricted to a few monasteries or used only in ceremonial documents, magic spells, or secret love letters.
While we acknowledge that it is the nature of language to change, we agree that something essentially human is lost when a form of expression passes from this world.
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