![\"ADLaM](\"http:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/adlam-in-use.jpeg\" "\\"adlam-in-use.jpeg\\"")
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Some days, there are too many overlapping events. On Thursday, 15 February 2018, there were at least three:<\/p>\n
![\"3rd](\"http:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/3rd-adlam-conf-big-deal.jpeg\" "\\"3rd-adlam-conf-big-deal.jpeg\\"")
I ended up at the IMUG presentation on the ADLaM script. Craig Cornelius gave an introduction to the script and its history with stories of how he got involved plus his recent attendance at the 3rd ADLaM Conference in Mamou, Guinea, 5\u20138 January 2018. Over 800 people attended the conference from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Mauritania and Chad to Liberia, plus Angola, Kuwait, Belgium, Spain, USA, and beyond. After Craig\u2019s presentation,\u00a0Ibrahima &\u00a0Abdoulaye Barry (creators of the ADLaM script) joined in via video chat for the question and answer part of the evening. They started creating the script in 1989 when they were ages 10 and 14.<\/p>\n
The presentation and discussion were inspirational. The ADLaM script seems effective in teaching how to read and write Fulani\/Pulaar and has potential to improve literacy for millions. Its use has spread across Africa and seems to be gaining momentum among the Fulbe people. The script can also be used for other African languages. One of the advantages over Latin and Arabic script (both currently used to write various African languages) is that ADLaM represents some of the sounds unique to those languages with less ambiguity.\u00a0At some point, I may design some ADLaM typefaces.<\/p>\n
Some of the current challenges:<\/p>\n
I suspect that eventually Richard Ishida<\/a> (@r12a<\/a>) will add ADLaM to his tools for various scripts, like he has for N\u2019Ko (script summary<\/a>, character picker<\/a>, and character notes<\/a>) and many other scripts<\/a>. View the ADLaM Unicode block in his UniView tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n Adlam availability from Google:<\/p>\n It was fun to see familiar names as part of the story, some unexpectedly, like mention of Stephen Rapp<\/a> helping connect the Barry brothers to the Unicode Consortium<\/a>\u00a0(@unicode<\/a>) by way of Deborah Anderson of UC Berkeley\u2019s Script Encoding Initiative<\/a> at the 2013 Lettering Arts\/Calligraphy Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. Coincidentally, on the same day of this ADLaM talk I attended on 15 February 2018, Deborah Anderson was presenting a Sawyer Seminar on\u00a0Preserving the World\u2019s Languages and Cultures (through character encoding)<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University (@ICLSColumbia<\/a>).<\/p>\n Craig Cornelius also has worked with the Cherokee Nation on their script. @NPR<\/a>\u00a0talked about some of his work in Gmail Sends Message in Cherokee<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(20 November 2012). Craig also presented some of his work in\u00a0Indigenous languages and technology\u2014Challenges, standards, & tools for small language communities<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at the United Nations\u00a0International Expert Group Meeting on Indigenous Languages<\/a>\u00a0(@UN4Indigenous<\/a>), 19\u201321 January 2016.<\/p>\n Read and watch more about ADLaM and other African scripts (plus one in Sri Lanka):<\/p>\n IMUG related links:<\/p>\n \u2014Jeff Kellem<\/a>\u00a0(@composerjk<\/a>\u00a0\/ @slantedhall<\/a>) Craig Cornelius gave an introduction to the ADLaM script and its history with stories of how he got involved plus his recent attendance at the 3rd ADLaM Conference in Mamou, Guinea, 5\u20138 January 2018. Over 800 people attended the conference from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Mauritania and Chad to Liberia, plus Angola, Kuwait, Belgium, Spain, USA, and beyond. After Craig\u2019s presentation,\u00a0Ibrahima &\u00a0Abdoulaye Barry (creators of the ADLaM script) joined in via video chat for the question and answer part of the evening. They started creating the script in 1989 when they were ages 10 and 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,34,36],"tags":[38,39,62,96],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation","category-typography","category-writing-systems","tag-adlam","tag-africa","tag-imug","tag-typeface"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/3rd-adlam-conf-big-deal.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":938,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n1403 Vintage Mono Pro typeface specimen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"