Did you know there are 181 scripts used to write the world’s languages? This includes the Tai Viet script, used to write five Indo-Chinese languages. Until a UNESCO workshop in 2006, there was no unified way of writing it for all the languages, and they have no set order for arranging characters, as we do with our alphabet.
Tai Viet Script
These 181 scripts are made up of more than 100,000 different symbols. This includes more than 500 which are part of the Ethiopic (Ge’ez) script used in Africa to write more than 40 languages, including Afar (below).
The Afar language in Ethiopic script
The Tai Viet script and the Afar language have both been featured on the new ScriptSource website. ScriptSource is an initiative of Wycliffe Bible Translators’ partner organisation SIL International.
The aim is to coordinate information about characters, scripts and the languages in which they are used from around the world. By doing so, they aid people developing scripts for never-before-written languages. It enables languages using non-roman scripts to be printed and have their alphabet recognised. It’s one part – a very important part – of enabling a Bible to be printed in every language where it’s needed.
The ScriptSource website has information about scripts, languages and characters from languages around the world. They also have information about where fonts are needed to enable language work to progress.
Font specialists are one of the many roles needed within IT in the work of Bible translation; find out more about IT roles on our website.
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Tags: IT, ScriptSource
[...] ScriptSource – an online database for linguists, researchers and font designers to share information about scripts and needs for new characters. [...]