Champlain College Publishing Initiative

The world has more than 6,000 languages, but half are expected to be extinct by the end of this century.

This loss of cultural diversity is even more dramatic in terms of the alphabets in which those languages are written.

Writing has become so dominated by a small number of global cultures that those 6,000 languages are written in fewer than 100 alphabets.

Moreover, fully a third 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.

The Endangered Alphabets Project, which consists of an exhibition of carvings and a book, is the first-ever attempt to address this issue. Check it out by clicking here.