A Hearth Library collection
Living Scripts
Learning to read the world's writing systems
Games and, in time, sources for reading modern scripts, starting with Devanagari (Hindi), Arabic, Malayalam and Cyrillic (Russian), then Greek, Hangul, Hebrew, Japanese kana, Bengali, Thai, Georgian and Ge'ez. The aim is to read a sign, a menu or a map, not to speak the language.
Games
- Letter Ladder Learn a script a few letters at a time.
- Look-alikes Tell apart the letters easiest to mix up.
- Read the Sign Three real signs a day.
- Loanword Hunt Find the English words hiding in the script.
- Menu Order Order from a menu written only in the script.
- Vowel Builder Vowel signs in Hindi, Malayalam and Arabic, built by hand.
- Join-up Build words from pieces and watch them join.
- Name Plate Your name in the script, letter by letter.
- Map Reader A map labeled only in the script.
- Speed Read As many words as you can read in a minute.
Sources on the way
No sources are translated yet. These are planned, in rough date order.
- about 430 BCECadmus brings the letters to Greece
Herodotus, Athens, Ancient Greek.
- about 900On the letters
Chernorizets Hrabar, Bulgaria, Old Church Slavonic.
- 1446The correct sounds for teaching the people
King Sejong and his scholars, Hanseong (Seoul), Classical Chinese and Korean.
- 1377Writing is a craft of cities
Ibn Khaldun, Qal'at Ibn Salama, Arabic.
- about 1000The iroha: every kana once
Anonymous, Japan, Japanese.
- 1872Stories from Tolstoy's reading primer
Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya Polyana, Russian.
- 1881The city where everything costs the same
Bharatendu Harishchandra, Banaras, Hindi.
- about 750Fables of Kalila and Dimna
Ibn al-Muqaffa', Basra, Arabic.
- 1887Kundalatha, the first Malayalam novel
Appu Nedungadi, Kozhikode, Malayalam.
- 1930Tagore's first reader
Rabindranath Tagore, Santiniketan, Bengali.
- 1885A traveller's Arabic words
Karl Baedeker (publisher), Leipzig, English and Arabic.