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The African art of Colour Writing

Chromatographic or Quantographic writing system of the Edo people of Benin

ChromatographyMost writing system are based on graphic marks which are either phonetic or symbolic, but the Edo people of Benin and Nigeria use a chromatographic, or colour writing system. Instead of using a large amount of graphic symbols, only a few symbols are used, and the color of each symbol determines the meaning. 

This is probably not very practical, since you would need to have a handful of pencils available whenever you need to write something, but I find it interesting that such a writing system evolved.

AdinkraThere are also other writing systems, such as the Adinkra symbols, which uses graphic symbols to express philosophical concepts like funtunfunefu-denkyemfunefu for democracy and unity, and is used by the people of Ghana extensively to decorate their fabrics and many household objects, describing the personal philosophy of the owner.

funtunfunefu-denkyemfunefu The Siamese Crocodiles share one stomach, yet they fight over food. This popular symbol is a remind that infighting and tribalism is harmful to all who engage in it.

I've always been fascinated by languages, and found really fascinating information about languages and writing systems and alphabets, take a look at the website Omniglot which contains samples from alphabets and scripts in all languages, or Zompist which has numbers from 1 to 10 in more than 5000 languages.

[via Pixel y Dixel]


by Olivier Ozoux last modified 2006-06-03 13:00
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