World Endangered Writing Day and Recognizes New Documentary and Script Revitalization Work in the Philippines
/
The efforts of individuals and regional organizations to revive traditional writing systems of the Philippines are being recognized in the second annual celebration of World Endangered Writing Day, on January 23, 2025.
“Mangyan Ambahan: Wisdom for Our Filipino Soul,” a powerful documentary by Chiara Cox created in collaboration with the Mangyan Heritage Center, will kick off the day’s live events.
Chiara Cox
This film is a deep dive into one of the few surviving ancient Filipino writing systems—the Hanunuo Mangyan script. As one of only four pre-10th-century scripts still in use, it remains an essential part of Mangyan culture through the ambahan—beautiful, sung poetry that shares wisdom across generations. Chiara’s documentary brings this unique tradition to life through interviews and stories, revealing its enduring impact on Filipino heritage and the global diaspora.
Presented in conjunction with SOAS University of London and the National Museum of Language, the showing will be followed by a Q&A and discussion moderated by Tim Brookes of the Endangered Alphabets Project.
World Endangered Writing Day has been created and organized by the Endangered Alphabets Project, based in Vermont, U.S.A.
“The world is just waking up to the importance of endangered spoken languages,” said Brookes, who founded the organization in 2010, “and everywhere you can see programs, not only to document but to revitalize them. We want to widen the spotlight to include endangered forms of writing.”
His organization’s research has identified more than 300 scripts currently in use around the world, of which 90% are to varying degrees threatened. The mission of the Endangered Alphabets project is to alert the world to the dangers of script loss and to help communities preserve and revitalize their unique scripts.
“A culture’s unique script,” he explained, “is an embodiment of that culture’s collective wisdom and view of the world. A script is as much a cultural product as music, dance, or costume. For a community to lose its traditional script means losing not only generations of knowledge, but also a set of iconic visual emblems that say, ~This is us. We are here, and we have the right to dignity, identity, and a footprint on the Earth.”
World Endangered Writing Day will also celebrate the one-year anniversary of the publication of Brookes’ book, Writing Beyond Writing, in which Brookes singles out for praise the cultural and linguistic revival efforts underway in the Philippines.
“These communities,” he said, “are leading the world in exploring ways to remain literate and modern, while at the same time reconnecting with their traditional cultural roots.”
Writing Beyond Writing also addresses a rarely-asked question: what can these little-used scripts teach the world’s mainstream cultures learn about writing itself?
“Traditional Philippine scripts not only carry their communities’ collective wisdom,” Brookes explained, “but they embody their histories, beliefs, their poetics and their histories of technology. The use of bamboo as a writing medium in the Philippines, for example, is a wonderful illustration of adapting other scripts to fit a material that is available, inexpensive and suitable for the purpose—and in the process creating iconic letterforms that are unique to the region. We have so much to learn from these writing traditions.”
The Endangered Alphabets Project, based in Vermont, USA, is the only organization in the world dedicated to preserving and revitalizing endangered cultures by researching, cataloging, and promoting their indigenous writing systems through talks, exhibitions, educational materials, games, and artwork.
Chiara Cox will be receiving the award for Documentary about a Minority Script by the Endangered Alphabets Project for her work in partnership with the Mangyan Heritage Center.
For more information, contact admin@endangeredalphabets.com. Schedule and (free) registration for the events of World Endangered Writing Day are at https: //www.endangeredwriting.world/.
Writing Beyond Writing can be found at https://www.endangeredalphabets.com/writing-beyond-writing.
