Of browsers, keyboards, and fonts, with a focus on certain West African scripts
In previous posts I have discussed the process of encoding West African scripts into the Unicode standard. The question that…
Category: African Languages
The Outlook for ADLaM
Back in the 1980’s, as the story goes, two Fulani brothers growing up in Guinea took it upon themselves to…
Minding Mende
A fair amount of source material in the Kikakui script of the Mende language of Sierra Leone has just been…
A close look at N’ko
One of the more curious African scripts around is one that I was introduced to by Joe Lauer, a librarian…
Paths to understanding Kpelle
For those interested in learning more about the history and use of the Kpelle language and script, there are a…
An Ivorian innovation: the Bété script
I write this in memory of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, who called himself “Cheikh Nadro”, or “he who does not forget”.…
Ah, Foumban…
My memories of visiting Foumban, Cameroon in 2006 are still fairly vivid after a twelve-year absence. The palace with a…
Encoding the Bassa Vah script of Liberia
The tale of how the Bassa Vah script came to be encoded into the Unicode Standard winds through Syracuse, Germany,…
Notes on the Study of Loma
A script was developed in the 1930’s for the Loma language by Widɔ Zoɓo of Boneketa, Liberia. While it has…