It sounds interesting and looks like you are well on your way, but I would still suggest adding some images of the scripts to your Kickstarter page. I’d like to see what this is all about.

A note: A typographer is not the same as a type designer.

(Edit: Ooops! Sorry. I thought it was the originator posting.)

Thanks for sharing this Brian, and filling in the blanks. Definitely a worthwhile project. And I hope that Koloma somehow does get revived.

hhp

I should perhaps have linked also to the Language Log post on this project, which has pictures of the Mro and Chakma scripts.

Edit in reply to Hrant: It's hard to tell from the snippets of info on the internet, but the Koloma script for Kokborok is said to have "disappeared", which may mean that there are no extant examples of the script and we only know that such a script existed. In that case, it would be impossible to revive, unfortunately.

I think languages are harder to revive than scripts, and I'm sure some people also thought the Hebrew langauge (which was dormant* for a very long time**) was "impossible to revive"... although I admit that the tenacity of the Hebrew script probably helped there. Really though, if Kokborok is still alive reviving Koloma would be that much easier. Build it, and they will come - make the font, and use it - remember Mesrop Mashtots!

* In fact an idea (which is what a script is) can never die.

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language

hhp

But how can you revive a script without knowing what it looked like? I gathered that no examples of the script may have survived (the chronicles of the Borok kings were supposedly written in Kokborok in the Koloma script, but we only know about the later Sanskrit translation). In that case, the Koloma script would be irretrievably forgotten.

Of course you're right about that. How old do you think the most recent Koloma inscription would be? In the case of Armenian we don't know exactly how Mesrop Mashtots designed our alphabet, but we do have inscriptions from about a century afterwards (beginning of the 7th century) and lucky for us it was never interrupted.

hhp

@hrant:
In fact an idea (which is what a script is) can never die.

A script is a specific human invention, not a basic discovery of a law of nature.

The value of pi, the three laws of thermodynamics (although not their specific expression), Maxwell's Equations, and so on, could all be rediscovered were they to be forgotten.

The text of the plays of Shakespeare, the score to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - if, somehow, all record of these things were to be erased, they would be lost for ever.

The same can happen to an alphabet.

Fortunately, though, the Borok language, Kokborok, is still very much alive. The language may previously have been known as Bara, or by other names, and so the Koloma script may indeed have been recorded as well, even though the record may be awkward to find.

EDIT: Further searches have indicated that indeed the script is believed to be lost, and to have only been used in the Chronicle of the Borok Kings, lost in its original language.

However, this site claims that a group called the Tippera uses the Koloma script in the present day.

However, this site claims that a group called the Tippera uses the Koloma script in the present day.

Tippera is just a variant anglicized form of Tripura. That is most likely an erroneous claim that the Koloma script is still used, given that the Chronicle of the Borok Kings has been recorded in Bengali since the 15th century (instead of in its original Kokborok, one presumes).