Aircraft fuel is notoriously dirty. This airline is betting on clean electricity.

Harbour Air, a Vancouver-based airline that operates seaplanes, wants to become the world’s first all-electric airline.

Harbour Air, a small Vancouver-based airline, made history this month with the world’s first all-electric flight of a commercial aircraft.

The six-passenger DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver seaplane modified to run on a 750-horsepower electric motor took off and landed on the Fraser River for a four-minute flight. And it couldn’t have come at a better time: the climate emergency is only growing worse.

Watch LIVE as @HarbourAirLtd #ePlane takes flight, magnified by the magni500 electric propulsion system. Join our live stream for this historic event as the first all-electric commercial aircraft ushers in a new era of aviation. https://t.co/8lkydg9JX7

— magniX (@MagniX) December 10, 2019

In the US, transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and aircraft account for 12 percent of transportation emissions. US air travel reached a record high last year, pushing up overall emissions even while the power sector saw a decline. 

To make matters worse, demand for flights is growing. Emissions from air travel are poised to spike up to sevenfold globally by 2050 if nothing else changes.

That’s why it’s so urgent to decarbonize air travel. Yet the technical challenges are immense. Alternatives like carbon-neutral biofuels remain far too costly. And the stodgy rules in the heavily regulated, risk-averse aviation sector lag far behind advances in electric drivetrains.

Harbour Air’s short test flight using zero-emissions propulsion is therefore pretty exciting. In March, the company announced that it’s betting big on electric aviation, aiming to zero out all of its emissions with electric airplanes. They think they have a formula that works. Here’s why.

Harbour Air is the perfect candidate for electrification

I’ve written before about the technical challenge and promise of electric aviation. But Harbour Air presents an interesting case study for how electric flight can make business sense as well.

Harbour Air flies a fleet of more than 40 propeller-driven seaplanes that take off and land on water. It flies 500,000 passengers per year to 12 destinations in the Pacific Northwest.

And it turns out that the current generation of battery and electric motor technology — developed for cars and industry — fits almost perfectly within the Harbour Air’s existing operations.

“We are in this rather unique position of having short stage lengths and single-engine aircraft that require a lot less energy,” than larger planes, said Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall. “We started doing some math and working with some engineers and figured out that it was actually entirely doable with the technology that exists today, although with a limited range and limited payload.”

A battery is nowhere near as energy-dense as a liquid fuel. Jet fuel, for example, has a specific energy of 11,890 watt-hours per kilogram. Top-tier lithium-ion batteries currently max out around 250 watt-hours per kilogram. That means you’ll need a far heavier amount of batteries to match the distance traveled with conventional aviation fuels.

Weight is a critical constraint in small aircraft, where almost every pound has to be tabulated in flight plans. This drastically limits how far and how fast an aircraft can go.

But all of Harbour Air’s routes are less than 30 minutes, so there’s plenty of juice in the current and upcoming generation of batteries to meet the demand for these routes, and the planes don’t have to be quick.

Another consideration is that fuel is often the largest single expense for most airlines. Its price is volatile and spikes can hit small airlines especially hard. Electricity prices, on the other hand, are far more stable. 

Harbour Air is working on converting a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 beaver, like the one pictured here, to run on electricity. Test flights are expected later this year.

Harbour Air is working on converting a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 beaver, like the one pictured here, to run on electricity. Test flights are expected later this year.

McDougall says he expects electrification to save money for the company. “It’s just way cheaper to run electrified propulsion systems in aircraft in the long-run as the technology evolves,” he said. That’s because electric motors are simpler and easier to maintain than the company’s existing piston engines, which require millions of dollars in maintenance every year, he said. A piston motor drivetrain ranges in cost between $300 and $450 per operating hour. The electric drivetrain is projected to cost $12 per hour.

Lower operating costs coupled with improving range and performance would eventually lead to lower ticket prices, according to McDougall.

Electrification is also on-brand for Harbour Air. The company has been carbon neutral since 2007. McDougall said many of the airline’s customers are tourists and vacationers who want to experience snow-capped mountains, forests, and clear, pristine waters. A quieter, cleaner aircraft becomes another selling point, one that customers might even pay extra for. 

But all the factors that make Harbour Air an ideal candidate for electrification are also why few companies can follow in their footsteps. About 5 percent of global commercial flights are shorter than 100 miles, but Harbour Air flies them exclusively. It’s much easier to change the logistics around propulsion in a small regional carrier than in a global airline that’s constantly competing on cost. And no electric propulsion system right now can get dozens of passengers in an airliner off the ground. For now.

Electric motors solve some aviation problems but also introduce their own headaches

Harbour Air is sharing the costs of their foray into electrification with magniX, an electric powertrain company founded in Australia.

Roei Ganzarski, CEO of magniX, told Vox his company is developing electric motors with a high power-weight ratio, a trait especially suited to aircraft. They began looking for a partner a year ago that would be interested in flights with a 100-mile range and found Harbour Air. 

He noted that while battery capacity remains the biggest challenge, magniX is concentrating on vaulting some of the other hurdles in electrifying aircraft. One issue is that electric motors generate a lot of heat, but there isn’t enough air for cooling them at the current flight speeds of aircraft. Adding a liquid cooling system would add weight and defeat the purpose of a light and powerful motor, so magniX has developed a proprietary cooling system. 

A magniX electric propulsion system mounted in a Cessna iron bird.

A magniX electric propulsion system mounted in a Cessna iron bird.

Another concern is that there are few power electronic devices like inverters that are rated for aviation, so magniX is developing those as well.

But airlines also have to consider how their ground operations will accommodate electrics.

Right now, magniX and Harbour Air have retrofitted a six-passenger de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver, a plane first flown in 1947. However, using an electric motor as a drop-in replacement for a piston engine is a bit like treating a gasoline engine in a car as a drop-in replacement for a horse; it undervalues the potential of the technology.

Getting the most out of an electric drivetrain would require redesigning the aircraft around a new propulsion system — smaller wings, more motors, different aerodynamics. That in turn would unlock new approaches to air travel, like air taxis.

But it’s the retrofitted aircraft that will likely be the first to get off the ground with customers. Ganzarski said he expects Harbour Air to carry paying passengers by 2022. 

“We’re really confident that from an engineering point of view, there’s no issues there. I really don’t see much downside at all,” McDougall said. “The things that we can’t control are the regulatory side of it, although we’re getting a lot of cooperation and interest from the FAA and Transport Canada.”

The biggest hurdle might be aviation regulations

The airline industry and government regulators have spent decades making flying safe and affordable. However, the rules they’ve created are tailored to conventional jet and propellor-driven aircraft.

In the United States, the regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates and certifies aircraft, are set in law. That gives them teeth, but it makes it harder for rules designed to govern piston engines and turbines to adapt to battery-powered planes, and regulators are reluctant to change them because they are unfamiliar with the technology and they are afraid of introducing new risks.

“Our ability to change the law to accommodate new technology is very poor,” said Pat Anderson, director of the Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “This is new to the FAA, so it’s pretty challenging.”

For example, the FAA has rules for how a battery has to be encased in a “coffin” inside an aircraft to contain a potential fire or leak. That might make sense for smaller batteries designed to power and back up the plane’s electronics, but not so much for a battery meant to fly the plane itself.

“The energy for a propulsive battery would be so much that it wouldn’t be a coffin; it would be a bomb,” said Anderson.

The FAA did not respond to requests for comment.

The FAA is trying to adapt, though. The agency is shifting how it comes up with rules for electric airplanes from federal regulations toward standards established by consensus from the industry. Experts in new technology can meet and vote on the requirements electric airplanes have to meet to be certified. But the process itself is new, so it might still take several years before the agency can come up with standards that make sense for electric aircraft.

However, when an electric commercial flight does take off for the first time with paying customers, it could start a revolution. “It will feel a little like Kitty Hawk, I think,” McDougall said. 

Rare honor: New Earth-observation satellite named after NASA scientist

Artist's illustration of the Sentinel-6A satellite, which NASA and several partners have renamed in honor of Earth scientist Michael Freilich. The Earth-observation spacecraft is scheduled to launch in November 2020.

Michael Freilich just got a very big, and very rare, honor.

An Earth-observation satellite scheduled to launch this fall was just named after the recently retired Freilich, who headed NASA's Earth Science division from 2006 to 2019. 

The Sentinel-6A/Jason CS satellite — a collaboration involving the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — will now be known as Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich, NASA officials announced today (Jan. 28).

This rarely happens; people whose names grace space missions are almost always dead. (See  Ferdinand Magellan, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Edwin Hubble, Enrico Fermi and Vera Rubin, among many others.) 

NASA made a big exception to this unwritten rule recently with its record-breaking Parker Solar Probe mission, which was named after pioneering solar physicist Eugene Parker, who's 92 years old. (The spacecraft was previously known as Solar Probe Plus.) 

Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich is half of the two-satellite Sentinel-6 mission, which is part of the European Union's Copernicus program. Sentinel-6's chief task is to continue mapping sea-level rise — a consequence of human-caused climate change — through the 2020s and 2030s. (The second Sentinel-6 craft will launch in 2025, if all goes according to plan.)

"Records show that, on average, global sea level rose by 3.2 mm a year between 1993 and 2018, but hidden within this average is the fact that the rate of rise has been accelerating over the last few years," ESA officials wrote in a mission description. "Taking measurements of the height of the sea surface is essential to monitoring this worrying trend — and the Sentinel-6 mission is on the way to being ready to do just this."

It's fitting that Sentinel-6A now bears Freilich's name, NASA and ESA officials said. Freilich worked as an oceanographer for nearly four decades, and, as NASA's Earth Science chief, he ramped up the development of satellites that keep tabs on our planet. In 2014 alone, for example, five NASA Earth-observation missions got off the ground.

"This honor demonstrates the global reach of Mike's legacy,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. 

"We are grateful for ESA and the European partners' generosity in recognizing Mike's lifelong dedication to understanding our planet and improving life for everyone on it," Bridenstine added. "Mike's contributions to NASA — and to Earth science worldwide — have been invaluable, and we are thrilled that this satellite bearing his name will uncover new knowledge about the oceans for which he has such an abiding passion."

Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich is scheduled to launch in November atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Plane of British airman who went missing in Europe during World War Two is found in a lake near Amsterdam 77 years later

Sergeant Charles Armstrong Bell, whose identity in the picture is not yet clear, with crew who were listed as MIA when their plane was lost as it returned from a bombing run in Germany

The plane of a British airman who went missing in Europe during World War Two has been discovered in a lake near Amsterdam 77 years later.

Wreckage of a Short Sterling bomber BK716 manned by Sergeant Charles Armstrong Bell, which disappeared in 1943, was found submerged in Lake Markermeer this week.

World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, saw nearly every part of the globe embroiled in a calamitous conflict. The war was fought between two groups of countries – the Allies and the Axis. The principal belligerents of the Allies were the U.K., U.S., France and the Soviet Union. For the Axis, the biggest powers were Germany, Italy and Japan. The war saw a casualty count of around 40-50 million, making it the largest and bloodiest war in history.

Many experts argue that the conflict was a result of nearly two decades of uneasy tension between nations in the aftermath of World War I (1914-18). WWII began on Sept. 1, 1939, when German forces invaded Poland. The U.K. and France were the first to respond with a declaration of war just two days after. The conflict between the Soviets and the Germans began with the latter's invasion on June 22, 1941. The war in the Pacific, fought mainly between Japan and the U.S., began with the attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. 

The Allied landings at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, along with the advancement of the Soviet Red Army on Nazi forces, led to the fall of German forces and eventually, the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945. On the Pacific front, America's crackdown on Japanese strongholds and the devastating atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which left nearly 150,000 people dead) in August 1945 brought an end to the war. WWII officially ended as Japan signed the surrender documents on the deck of U.S. battleship USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945.

Land battles, aerial bombardments, political executions, racial crackdowns, war-induced diseases and famines and maritime attacks were counted among the biggest reasons for the loss of civilian lives. Although there are no reliable official records of civilian casualties, it is estimated to number between 35 and 60 million. Nearly 5.7 million Jews lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps – more than half of whom were from Poland.

Sergeant Bell, from Langley Park, Durham, was listed as Missing In Action - along with six other crew members - when their Short Sterling bomber BK716 was lost as it returned from a bombing run in Germany.

Police believe the remains of the crew are still on board.

As preparations are underway to recover the plane in March, the Bomber Command Museum of Canada contacted Consett Police, part of Durham Constabulary, to help track down any living relatives of the sergeant

The Marker Wadden, artifical islands located in the Markermeer lake in The Netherlands. Wreckage of the bomber was discovered in the lake near Amsterdam

A family member contacted Consett Police after appeals were shared on social media, and relatives of the six other crew members have also been traced.

In an appeal for any other relatives, a spokesman from Durham Constabulary said: 'Charles Armstrong Bell was the son of James Ainsley Bell and Elizabeth Bell and lived at 10, Quebec Street, Langley Park with his wife Frances.

'On his memorial stone he is listed as a son and husband, making us believe that he did not have children.

A model of a Short Sterling bomber pictured from circa 1939. Wreckage of the bomber BK716 was found earlier this week

'Frances later remarried a John Wharton and may have had a sister by the name of Lilly Dobbin. Frances died in 2003 and we can find no record of Lilly Dobbin.

'It is unknown where family members may have ended up, so please share this post to maximise our chances of success.

The Markermeer, one of Europe's largest freshwater lakes, regulates the water level in the rest of the Netherlands. The crew were returning from a bombing run in Germany

'It would be great to help in this worthy cause to ensure that an airman who paid the ultimate sacrifice is represented by his family at his burial.'

Anyone with information should call Sergeant Mawson at Consett Neighbourhood Policing Team.

'Skeletor riding shotgun': Lone driver tried using fake skeleton for HOV lane

A man disguised a skeleton as a passenger to use the car pool lane.

A 62-year-old driver put a disguised fake skeleton in his car's passenger seat in an effort to use the high-occupancy vehicle lane of an Arizona freeway this week.

But the stunt didn't work.

The Arizona Public Safety Department said a trooper pulled over the man on Thursday after noticing the fake skeleton. It was tied to the front seat with a yellow rope and wearing a camouflage bucket hat.

Troopers shared an image of the odd finding on Twitter, saying, "Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You're dead wrong!"

Skeletor is a fictional villain, the nemesis of He-Man, in the Masters of the Universe comic series.

The real-life driver in Arizona has been cited for violations of HOV and car window-tint rules, according to the state Public Safety Department.

Every year, approximately 7,000 drivers in Arizona are cited for violating HOV regulations, department spokesman Raúl García told The Associated Press.

Last April, a man was pulled over after driving in the HOV lane with a mannequin wearing a sweatshirt, baseball cap and sunglasses, the AP reported.

10 of Europe’s most scenic train journeys

Flåm Railway, Norway

The rail journey across southern Norway from Bergen to Oslo – northern Europe’s highest mainline railway – is so beautiful that all seven hours of it were broadcast in 2009 on Norwegian television as the first ever Slow TV (Sakte-TV) programme. However, for passengers who alight at remote and tiny Myrdal an even greater pleasure awaits. The branch line from here down to Flåm is one of the world’s steepest railway lines, dropping 867m in just 20km, and was created in 1940 to serve villages along Sognefjord. Along the way, it provides vistas of the fjord, along with mountains, the picturesque Lake Reinungavatnet and myriad waterfalls, including the mighty 93m Kjosfossen.

West Highland Line, Scotland

Although the Cambrian Coast Line in Wales and the Highlands’ Kyle of Lochalsh Line both make compelling claims to be Britain’s most scenic railway, there’s really no competing with the West Highland Line for the variety and splendour of the landscapes it passes through. Running from Glasgow north to Mallaig, with a branch line off to Oban, the line passes hills and mountains before hauling itself up onto Rannoch Moor, a slice of wilderness that brings a sense of awe. The remote station at Corrour – familiar to fans of the Trainspotting films – is the highest in Britain (408m), while beyond lies Glenfinnan Viaduct and the craggy coastline, with its views out to the Small Isles.

Rome to Palermo, Italy

It’s not every rail journey that involves a bonus sea voyage. Board the direct service from Rome to the Sicilian capital, though, and you’ll find your train shunted onto a ferry to be carried across the Strait of Messina. The trip takes a little under 12 hours in total, passing down the Tyrrhenian Sea coastline. Highlights en route include Mount Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and the countryside of Calabria, Italy’s toe. After a short passage across the waves, the train offers views of the north coast of Sicily as it heads westward to Palermo.

Mariazellerbahn, Austria

Clocking in at an impressive 78km, the Mariazell railway is the longest narrow-gauge line in Austria and has been running since 1907. It starts its journey a little to the west of Vienna, at St Pölten, one of Austria’s oldest cities. After gliding along the scenic Pielach valley the train pushes up into the mountains, heading for the Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature Park and Gemeindealpe Mitterbach ski resort, its passage smoothed by 19 viaducts and 21 tunnels, before arriving at Mariazell, a place of pilgrimage for more than 800 years. A steam locomotive takes over pulling duties on selected dates from May to October, while at the weekends and during Advent, first-class panorama carriages offer an even better view of the scenery.

Stockholm to Narvik, Sweden-Norway

If you want to travel direct from the Swedish capital to Narvik, one of Europe’s most northerly railway stations, your only option is the Norrlandståget sleeper. Happily, this is a route that gives the lie to the notion that beautiful scenery is wasted on sleeper trains. Go in summer when the night barely gets dark and you can watch the hypnotic passing of forests and lakes from the comfort of a snug berth. Travel in winter and you may see the night sky illuminated by the northern lights. The train takes nearly 19 hours to cover the 1,000km journey up eastern Sweden, crossing the Arctic Circle into Lapland, squeezing between mountains and Lake Torneträsk before finally heading into Norway.

Glacier Express, Switzerland

The Swiss have produced some of the most gloriously picture-perfect railway lines on the planet, their trains gliding along Alpine valleys or climbing doggedly up unfeasibly steep inclines to mountain fastnesses. The Glacier Express between St Moritz and Zermatt is perhaps the cream of the crop, cutting through the Alps on its journey from the Matterhorn to Piz Bernina mountains. An extraordinary feat of engineering that involves 291 bridges and 91 tunnels, the railway is a Unesco world heritage site. It would be a shame to pass through such scenery quickly, so this “express” service takes nearly eight hours to travel less than 300km, allowing passengers plenty of time to gaze out of the panoramic windows at the majestic surroundings.

Mainz to Koblenz, Germany

A must for fans of German wine and fairytale castles. This route along the Rhine cruises past the seemingly limitless vineyards that rise up along the steep banks of the river. Thrusting between mountains, it passes many of the flamboyant castles that inspired Disney and takes in the famous cliff at St Goarshausen, where Loreley’s siren song once brought sailors to grief. Although the fastest express trains complete the journey in 50 minutes, the more relaxing Mittelrheinbahn RB26 stopper services between Mainz and Cologne take nearly an hour and a half to chug along the Rhine’s left bank – time enough to admire the fetching old-world towns and villages as you sip a glass of riesling, or a floral Gewürztraminer.

Nice to Digne-les-Bains, France

A hundred years ago there were four metre-gauge railway lines that made up the Train des Pignes (Pine Cones Train) in southern France. Now the only survivor is this 150km route from Nice, on the Mediterranean coast, up to the spa town of Digne-les-Bains, the capital of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department. This is not a train in a hurry. Aside from the regular stations en route, there are dozens of tiny “halts” at which passengers may alight or board. Wending its way slowly upwards beside the River Var, the train visits medieval towns and compact villages before its arrival, over three hours later, in Digne on the edge of the Alpine foothills.

Levanto to La Spezia, Italy

The journey along the Italian riviera from Levanto to La Spezia may only take 35 minutes, but it includes the most sublime stretch of the Ligurian coast – the popular Cinque Terre (Five Lands). The pastel-coloured villages have been nestled in the cliffs for a thousand years or so, and along with their olive groves and vineyards make up an exquisite scene. For the full experience, take the regional train rather than the express: this stops at all five Cinque Terre villages – Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore – allowing passengers to hop off, hike between villages, and hop back on a train again.

Bar to Belgrade, Montenegro-Serbia

The fact that the Montenegro Express has to travel through 254 tunnels and over 435 bridges to climb from the seaport of Bar to the Serbian capital gives an indication of the spectacular scenery through which it passes. A relatively modern line – it opened in 1976 – it pulls away from the Adriatic, runs by Lake Skadar, southern Europe’s largest lake, and into the mountainous Biogradska Gora national park. Clipping a corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the train negotiates its way through Serbian hills before finally arriving at Belgrade’s Topčider station, 12 hours and 475km later. Look left just beforehand and you’ll get a glimpse of Marshal Tito’s deluxe private train.

The alphabets at risk of extinction.

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.

Unlike a spoken language, a written script like Cham, shown here, must be invented and actively learned

On his first two days of school, in a village above the Bangladeshi port of Chittagong, Maung Nyeu was hit with a cane. This was not because he was naughty. It was simply that Nyeu could not understand what the teacher was saying, or what was written in his textbooks. Although 98% of Bangladeshis speak Bengali as a first language, Nyeu grew up with Marma, one of several minority tongues in the region. Written, it is all curls, like messy locks of hair.

Eventually Nyeu managed to escape this cycle of bewilderment and beatings. After learning Bengali at home, he returned to school and went to university. Now he is pursuing a doctorate at Harvard. Yet Nyeu never forgot his early schooldays. He spends much of his time in the hills where he grew up, where he founded Our Golden Hour – a nonprofit fighting to keep Marma and a flurry of other scripts alive.

There are between 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world. Yet 96% are spoken by just 3% of the global population. And 85% are endangered, like Marma.

Along with the spoken words, something else is also at risk: each language’s individual script. When we talk about “endangered languages”, most of us think of the spoken versions first. But our alphabets can tell us huge amounts about the cultures they came from. Just as impressive is the length people will go to save their scripts – or invent whole new alphabets and spread them to the world.

Keep to the script

In August 2018, Unesco proudly announced that 2019 would be its year of indigenous languages. Unveiling a website devoted to the project, the organisation warned of the need to “preserve, revitalise and promote indigenous languages around the world”.

But while many have focused on the spoken word, how different cultures write is often ignored. This might have something to do with the artificiality of alphabets. Language is innate to all humans, but scripts have to be invented and actively learned. This has happened rarely. Even by the middle of the 19th Century, only 10% of adults knew how to write, and there are only about 140 scripts in use today.

To put it another way, suggests founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project Tim Brookes, writing can feel less vital to humanity than speaking. “Linguistics emerged with a very strong brief that said writing is an accidental byproduct of language, and the study of spoken language is really what linguistics is about,” explains Brookes, who also heads up the Alphabet of Endangered Alphabets, an interactive database of endangered scripts.

Linguists agree. “Endangered alphabets and scripts just haven’t been brought to people’s attention in the same way as languages,” says Sheena Shah, a specialist in endangered languages at London’s SOAS.

The shape of an alphabet – like the harsh downward scratches of a script like Runic – can tell us more about their culture than even a spoken language

By their very artificiality, alphabets arguably say more about a culture than mere language. That starts with the characters themselves. For instance, the harsh downward scratches of a script like Runic speak to life in Dark Age Scandinavia: each character was painstakingly carved into rock. On the other hand, intricate scripts like Chinese could only flourish after the invention of paper.

Writing can tell us about a culture in other ways, too. Because they live in the thick forests of the Philippines, users of Hanunuo have traditionally inscribed messages into bows of bamboo. Different fonts depend on the way that scribes wield the knife.

Hanunuo, an endangered alphabet used in the Philippines, is traditionally inscribed onto bamboo

Not that scripts are simply a means of communication. Some burrow right into the values of the people who use them, and not just because they often record sacred prayers or ancient remedies.

One striking example is the funeral rite of some Eastern Cham, an ethnic group living in southern Vietnam. Their writing is so fundamental to their identity that you literally can’t die without it. Before a Cham can go to the afterlife, some believe, a priest must sit by their grave and teach them their ABCs.

The ancient, endangered script of the Cham is so integral to their identity, they must learn it before they can go to the afterlife

Similar devotion exists even for alphabets stumbling towards extinction. The Coptic script – an intoxicating mix of Greek and cursive hieroglyphics – hasn’t been used colloquially in Egypt since the time of the Crusades. Yet it still plays a central role in the liturgy of local Christians.

None of this surprises Shah, who says that many communities see writing as a good in itself, as a symbol of cultural identity, even if it might not be in common use. 

Writing a wrong

When Kaoru Akagawa was young, she spent hours writing letters to her grandmother. Reading the responses was hard: her scrawled notes were just too messy. It was only later that Akagawa learned that her grandmother did not just have bad handwriting, but was writing in Kana, a script mostly used by Japanese women since medieval times.

Today, Kaoru Akagawa uses Kana, a mostly forgotten script traditionally used by Japanese women, in her art

Yet as the centuries passed, and the authorities began culling what they saw as superfluous letters, over 90% of Kana characters were lost. When Akagawa started investigating the script, she remembers, “no one had heard” of Kana.

Akagawa is far from alone. From Lontara to Manchu, scripts that have endured for hundreds of years are creeping towards destruction. As the story of Kana hints, this is partly a matter of politics. Governments are often keen to enforce one script over another for nationalist reasons, even if that means stomping the competition. Take Bangladesh. After 1971, politicians chose Bengali – which had gained symbolic status during the brutal independence war against Pakistan – as the national language and alphabet.

A student writes in Marma in one of Maung Nyeu’s classes, which have reached more than 3,000 children

But, Nyeu says, elevating Bengali ravaged Marma and other minority scripts. Nowadays “very few” people in his native hills can read or write their own alphabets.

Still, with enough determination, activists can drag their alphabets to safety. Nyeu himself is an excellent example. When he began teaching, he could barely gather five students together. Now his courses attract 3,000 children who learn from charming picture books featuring winged princesses, flying elephants and dragons. This is obviously encouraging, but Nyeu is eager to stress that educating children in their native alphabets can have practical benefits too. Weaning students on their mother scripts before introducing Bengali, he says, has led to a “significant” fall in school dropout rates.

Charming picture books like this one are a centrepiece of Nyeu’s classes

 Formal research points in the same direction. A study of Inuit children educated in the Inuktitut script, for example, found that they could solve complex mental problems by second grade. Meanwhile, Inuit students taught in English or French were already falling behind their non-Inuit classmates. 

When they were educated using the Inuktitut alphabet, shown on a stop sign in Nunavut here, Inuit children were ahead of their peers taught in English or French

Some alphabet devotees are taking these lessons so seriously that they invent whole new scripts. One of the most spectacular examples comes from a pair of Guinean brothers, Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry. Tired of squashing their native Fulani tongue into the French (Latin) or Arabic alphabets, neither of which could accurately represent the range of Fulani sounds, they developed something better. The process was wonderfully unscientific: the brothers simply closed their eyes, scribbled random shapes, and refined their favourites into letters. The result was Adlam, named after the first four letters of the alphabet. 

Just three decades after its invention, people use Adlam across several West African countries, and some have even used it to write books. The Barry brothers are now putting their creation online. You can now write Adlam text messages, while a Facebook group helps new learners.

Like Runic or Hanunuo, the very shape of Adlam can tug readers into the world that created it. But apart from being a lively reminder of human ingenuity – as Abdoulaye puts it, “whenever there’s a need for something, there’ll be someone there to come up with a solution” – its success shows why even unusual scripts are worth protecting. Because Adlam corresponds exactly to Fulani sounds, and learners avoid the muddle of studying Arabic or French first, illiterate fans can pick it up quickly.

Language activist Momen Talosh has built an app to try to revive two forms of Nubian, which are spoken mainly in Egypt and Sudan

Other activists are going digital as well. After selling his car to raise funds, Momen Talosh built an app to teach two forms of Nubian, a family of languages mainly spoken in Egypt and Sudan.

Central to his work is reviving the Old Nubian alphabet, itself related to Coptic. “This is my baby,” says Talosh, who now lives in Cairo.

Apart from the obvious benefits of shepherding young people towards endangered alphabets, Brookes says digitising scripts might be a way of circumventing the dominance of Arabic, Latin and other major alphabets. He imagines a world where activists could write in their own alphabets and see them automatically translated for colleagues abroad. It goes without saying, Brookes adds, that all this would “really upset people in power”.

What about alphabets that are just too obscure, or too repressed, to revive? We might still be able to enjoy them. Extinct alphabets can always be appreciated for the grace and inventiveness of their characters, even if no one understands what they mean.

By turning Kana into an art form, Akagawa has brought the alphabet to a wider audience