Writing Systems

The Character with No Sound

Before it was the linchpin of your email address, the @ symbol was a character without a sound, a silent…

10 months ago

The Logic of Blissymbols

Born from the horrors of war, Blissymbols was a universal language designed for peace, built on pure logic. This post…

10 months ago

The Alphabet Wars: Central Asia’s Script Politics

An alphabet is more than just a tool for writing; it's a flag, a declaration of identity. In Central Asia,…

10 months ago

How Vietnam Got Its Latin Script

The Vietnamese alphabet, Quốc Ngữ, presents a fascinating paradox with its Latin letters used for a tonal, Austroasiatic language. Originally…

10 months ago

The World’s Simplest Alphabet?

Imagine a language that can express every human thought with only 12 letters. Discover the world of Rotokas, a language…

10 months ago

The Lost Art of Shorthand: A Language of Speed

Before audio recorders, a unique form of writing captured speech at the speed of thought. This article delves into the…

10 months ago

Turkey’s Alphabet Revolution

Explore one of history's most radical linguistic reforms: Turkey's 1928 Alphabet Revolution. At the direction of Atatürk, the nation abandoned…

10 months ago

Georgia’s Living Alphabet

At first glance, the Georgian alphabet, Mkhedruli, appears less like a set of letters and more like a collection of…

10 months ago

The Silent Language of 64 Squares: Deconstructing the Grammar of Chess Notation

Beyond the silent battle of wits on the board, chess has its own powerful language. This post deconstructs Algebraic Notation,…

10 months ago

The Alphabet of a Revolution: How N’Ko Is Uniting West Africa’s Languages

While many alphabets are ancient, the N'Ko script was born in 1949 from one man's defiant response to colonial prejudice.…

10 months ago

This website uses cookies.