The tribe of 50,000 made the switch from a Latin alphabet to the Osage script in 2006. His efforts began in December 2019 with an email to the Osage Nation. A 197-year-old language code broadens that worldview. “A culture’s entire worldview can be contained in a language,” says Mowbray. Worldwide, more than 200 million people live with moderate to severe vision impairment-a figure that could triple by 2050 as the population ages.

But a lucky dozen or so-including Braille languages for Livonian, native to Latvia Fulani of West Africa and Lakota-have gained at least preliminary government approval. Ninety percent have yet to advance further, unable to gain traction with media and government officials or tied up in bureaucratic red tape. To date, the international studies major has proposed close to 150 alphabets, from the West Slavic Sorbian and Kashubian to Chamorro and Carolinian, spoken on the Northern Mariana Islands. Since January 2021, Harris Mowbray has digitally trekked the globe, making Braille alphabets mostly for minority and endangered languages. He is a benevolent character on the hunt for unusual ones.

Thesaurus audacious