Celebrating an endangered syllabary

The world has more than 6,000 languages, and those languages are written in fewer than 100 writing systems - more than a third of which are in danger of becoming obsolete. This project focuses on an endangered syllabary (writing system) from West Cameroon, Africa. The script was developed in the 19th century but the colonisation of Africa during WW1 led to it’s decline. Today some of the community are invested in reviving the script, through archived documents and getting the younger generation to learn it.

The publication is an informative celebration of this endangered syllabary, detailing the complex history of the script and typographically displaying the 83 characters.

An additional fold out fabric poster is included as a dust jacket, and displays the names and ruling dates of some of the famous kings of Bamum.