Ibhaliwe = script tailored for the Xhosa language;
Mono Sans = its first typeface.
by Siranush Babakhanova in collaboration with Dr. Fundile Nyati and Afika Nyati.
Map of Xhosa-speaker density (dark area) in South Africa. Xhosa is comprised of 9 dialects and is spoken as a first language by 8.2 million and as a second: by 10 million people (as of 2019).
One of the official languages of South Africa, Xhosa (a click language that has closely interacted with Khoisian, the protolanguage, as researchers suggest) is the most widely distributed language in South Africa. As many other indigenous languages in South Africa, it has a complex history (its education was restricted by the segregative Bantu Education Act, 1953). Most recently, it has inspired hundreds of millions via its usage in naming one of the leading operating systems, Ubuntu (”community”), its usage in Marvel movies/other entertainment, South Africa's hymn and its popularization through widely known Xhosa-natives (anti-apartheid revolutionary leaders Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi and many others).
The Xhosa language possesses unique phonetics, capitalisation incentives, morphology, differentiating characteristics informing orthography/punctuation, as well as an autonomous calendar, color and number systems. The Xhosa language is designed to align with philosophies of the Xhosa people as well as their milieu of extensive oral traditions, playing a paramount role in generation and preservation of the Xhosa creative practices.
“I am afraid that after my generation nobody will know Xhosa.”
— Afika Nyati, MIT’18
The Xhosa language supports religious, scientific, societal Xhosa practices, such as amagqirha’s (traditional healers’) medical, botanical, animal biology and spiritual practices, semiotics of clan totems and semantics of clan names which play a more important role in societal structures than surnames, umtshato’s (marriage) rituals, male/female initiation, circumcision, and others. The Xhosa language carries semiotics towards the symbolism used in Xhosa visual practices, such as architecture, garment design, and weapon design.
Given present-day’s technological revolution, rapid growth of available media and acceleration of information transfer, oral languages like Xhosa are in danger much more than when they were competing with those that had handwritten scripts in the past. “I am afraid after my generation nobody will speak in Xhosa”, said one of the interviewees, the first Xhosa MIT’16 student.
Currently available Latin script for Xhosa does not respond to the specifics of the language and the underlying creative practices and relations to the Xhosa culture’s different aspects. Need to spark a discussion and motivate creative design in this direction has led to Imbhaliwe (written) project to make a script.
The geometric patterns represent literary texts in the Sotho and Tsonga languages, written in the Pan-Southern African writing system called Isibheqe Sohlamvu, or Ditema tsa Dinoko. Syllabograms of isibheqe script are developed via symbolic design traditions of the Southern African region, such as Sotho litema murals and Zulu amabheqe beadwork. As a decolonial alternative literacy, the writing system is an Africanist technology designed to advance Southern African language literacies. Here is a suggested explanation of why this script is not widespread among Xhosas.
Who? When? How? should design a script and typefaces for Xhosa?
Xhosa Ibhaliwe Mono Sans. From top to bottom: transcribed from latin A to Z in capitals, lower-case letters and numbers.
I did not find evidence to deny that Xhosa script exists. However, if it does, it is not made widespread and does not have significant digital presence (as an open-source typeface) which motivated the specific goal of this project to create one.
Even though this is the first (to my knowledge) widely available iteration of a Xhosa script, I kindly invite Xhosa enthusiasts to help make suggestions on this website to improve and develop these linguistic tools further.
Here you can also find a disclaimer regarding my (not a Xhosa) participation in this project.
Making a written language involves responding to the needs to transcribe oral language into a different (visual, 2D) dimension. Design decisions both for Ibhaliwe and Mono Sans were both made out of finding a balance between pragmatism optimizing for maximal usage/accelerating learning Xhosa and connections with creative cultural practices, environment and beliefs uniquely defining Xhosas within the global community and history.
Imbhaliwe is a written script developed specifically for Xhosa language, basis for calligraphy and fonts.
Mono Sans is a typeface available in Regular font, ready for use on any device.