From Arabic and Japanese to Hebrew, Javanese and Cherokee, The Lonely Planet have released a book that explores 26 unique scripts and alphabets.  The Art of Language from Lonely Planet looks at beautifully written local proverbs, each one with calligraphy tutorials.

Accompanying insights into each language’s roots and popularity today, The Art of Language is a fascinating guide into other cultures and traditions. “As this book will show you, writing is like a slow-growing local plant whose roots are astonishingly deep,” Tim Brookes of The Endangered Alphabets Project writes in the book’s Introduction. “A traveller who ignores local writing is missing as much as one who ignores local architecture,” Tim says, “And as this book shows, many scripts have managed to thrive in our information age even as Latin letters have overtaken others. If you practise the calligraphy exercises offered in this book,” Tim continues, “you may realise something arguably even deeper about writing. Writing is an expression of its cultural origins, but the act of writing is an extension of the body, of the turn of the human wrist. It’s a form of grace, almost a dance.”

The Art of Language features the following scripts per region: Africa- Arabic, Ge’ez, N’Ko, Tifinagh, Vai, Asia- Bengali, Burmese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hangul, Hanuno’o, Japanese, Kawi-Javanese, Khmer, Mongolian, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, North America- Cherokee, Cree, Middle East- Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Europe – Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian, Greek.

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