A Typeface Designed to Revive the Endangered Cherokee Language | Hacker News Reader

A Typeface Designed to Revive the Endangered Cherokee Language

eyeondesign.aiga.org

79 pointssamsolomon10 comments

FWIW, Windows has had a built-in Cherokee font since Vista, several years before this font (2014). Windows 8 added another font and, more importantly, a partial Cherokee localization of the UI.

srcs: [1] http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2012/12/18/microsoft-add...

[2] http://www.cherokee.org/languagetech/en-us/windows8cherokee....

Nice effort on behalf of the Cherokee Nation Language Technology Office - I didn't know such a thing would exist, but I'm glad it does.

Similar cultural modernisation issues abound just over the water in Ireland, although Unicode apparently regards Gaelic script as a font variant of Latin. I did notice that a font called CeltScript is linked to in the links section here [0] and has been around a good while. I can imagine the script also had an influence on Tolkien, to say the least [1].

Maybe some of the more ancient cultures of the world should come together more often, celebrate their joint heritage and influence on the world. I'd support a Celtic-First Nations powwow-ceol session, even if not many others would!

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_type

[1] - http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Celtic

This is really cool! I'm a conlanger and I'd love a tutorial on creating fonts.

Cherokee Wikipedia looks like it's just getting started: https://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%8E%A4%E1%8E%B5%E1%8E%AE%E...

FontForge has a tutorial: http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html There's also a basic introduction to font design in David Peterson's book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Language-Invention-World-Build...

I've been meaning to learn how to create fonts for my own conlanging purposes for a few months now, but haven't quite gotten around to it yet.

Unifont supports Cherokee, BTW.

U+13A0..U+13FF: http://unifoundry.com/png/plane00/uni0013.png

U+AB70..U+ABBF: http://unifoundry.com/png/plane00/uni00AB.png

Perhaps it makes more sense to contribute this as part of the Google Noto project that is building typefaces for lesser known languages.

There is a very high chance that this will be included into Android by default, so you get the advantage of that reach.

Would love to know if there is a way for people to learn the Cherokee language. There's a Cherokee reserve within an hour of my house and I'd love to learn the language.

This was ten years ago, but I had a company that made streaming distance learning software and one of our first customers was the Cherokee Nation, who used it for teaching the language online. It seemed to me that teaching the language was a priority.

A bit of looking reveals they now publish archives on YouTube, for example: https://youtu.be/2DE691WwWac -- they do seem to get badly out of sync as they go (fact of life in flash video, with no timebase reference, dropped frames basically mean your video gets shorter.)

List of archives here: http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/Language/OnlineLangua...

With all efforts to preserve endangered languages, there's an implicit assumption that they should be preserved in the heads of human beings. What value does this language and being able to write it have? I've heard people say "preserves the culture", but is there any concrete value to it? Does it help feed people or entertain people, or anything that English wouldn't do just as well?

I have at least three Cherokee fonts on my system; wonder why they make it seem like there weren't any. "Its own font" sounds a bit patronizing.

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