The Centre for Endangered Languages (CEL), Sikkim University (SU) organised a 5 day workshop on “Scripts and Font Development for Endangered Languages of Sikkim and the Himalayas” from 23rd – 27th September 2019 at Barad Sadan Hall, Sikkim University. The workshop was led by Prof. Pramod Pandey, Jawaharlal Nehru University along with Prof. Bhim Narayan Regmi, Tribhuvan University; Dr. Ritesh Kumar, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, and Mr. Rupesh Rai, Central Institute of Indian Languages. A total of eighty six participants participated in the said workshop.
The inaugural session was chaired by the Vice-Chancellor Prof. Avinash Khare. He stated that there are more than 370 million indigenous people spread across 70 countries who represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity, practice unique traditions, and are the holders of unique knowledge systems and beliefs. In his inaugural remarks, Dr. Samar Sinha, the Coordinator of Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University, briefed about the establishment of the Centre and its mandate to document endangered languages of Sikkim and North Bengal.
In the technical sessions, Prof. Pramod Pandey talked on “Going Back to the Community: scripts for under-resourced languages of India.” He discussed about the characteristics of writing system as a representational system; orthography and its general usability requirements. He also discussed about perceptual distinctness, learnability and alphabetic paradox.
Dr. Ritesh Kumar gave a lecture on “Character Encoding” where he discussed about the internationalisation of character sets, encoding declaration, ISO character sets and Unicode. Mr. Rupesh Rai gave a tutorial on the Font Forge, a free software to create fonts in the computers. Dr Kumar and Mr Rai also tutored the participants to design and develop new fonts for their respective languages.
Prof. Bhim Narayan Regmi gave a talk on “Scripts in Nepal: commonalities, issues and development.” He focussed on the different scripts being used for different languages of Nepal, and discussed their sufficiency-redundancy of symbols to represent contrastive sounds of the languages, form-use of diacritics, and arrangement of the symbols in the script system.
Dr. Samar Sinha gave a lecture on “Nepali Varnamala: contemporary cleavages, claims and contentions.” He began his talk by distinguishing script and orthography, and presented his survey of Nepali varnamalas in various books and textbooks from the various Nepali speaking regions and time. He also highlighted the issues related to the contemporary Devanagari varnamala (of Nepali) and its orthographic practices.
Differing from the in-practice Devanagari-IPA mixed orthographic system for writing the Kulung language, Ms. Reena Rai’s paper on “A Script of Kulung: thoughts and practices” (presented by her supervisor Dr. Samar Sinha) propounded a Devanagari based orthographic system for Kulung based on the phonological system of the language highlighting its linguistic, orthographic, technological advantages, and confirmation to the devised UN standards.
Mr. Bishnu Lal Bhujel presented a paper on “A Devanagari based Orthography for Bhujel Language: problems and prospects” focussing on the indigenous native Kharpa script and a Devanagari based orthography for the Bhujel language.
The workshop concluded with a discussion session moderated by the Coordinator, Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University, and feedback session where the community members, students and members of the various ethnic organisations and intellectuals embarked on the following:
1. Training in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
2. Development of technologically compatible font and keyboard layouts.
3. Workshop on writing system to address the issues.
4. Development of writing manual.
