Twenty-six years ago, two brothers decided their native language needed a new alphabet. The scripts they’d been using to read and write their native Fulani, an African language spoken by at least 40 ...

It isn’t just languages that are endangered: dozens of alphabets around the world are at risk. And they could have even more to tell us. On his first two days of school, in a village above the ...

The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artefacts found at an ancient site in Syria are incised with what is potentially the earliest alphabetic writing ever found. The ...