The Alphabet That Will Save a People From Disappearing

Interesting article at the Atlantic on the creation of a new alphabet for the Fulani language.

Marred by a slight instance of cultural chauvinism: I snorted my milk at the following sentence: "But unlike Arabic, whose short vowels are written as diacritical marks above and below letters, the script assigned its five vowels proper letters." Arabic vowels may be different from Latin vowels; that hardly makes them "improper."

I also learned a useful marketing idea for those creating a new alphabet: Choose a catchy word with no repeating letters; make those letters the first of your alphabet; then take that same word to be the name of your alphabet (just as "alphabet"="Alpha"+"Beta", the first two letters of the Greek alphabet). Such is the case with "Adlam", the new alphabet described here.