Sora, an indigenous language from India, is getting a new typeface · Global Voices
The Sora (Saura) script Sorang Sompeng and its equivalent Odia and Latin characters. Image via Wikipedia by <PERSON>. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Indian type designer <PERSON> has created a new typeface for the Sorang Sompeng alphabet, used to write India's Sora language.
Sora, also known as Saura, is an indigenous language spoken, according to the 2011 Indian Census, by about 409,549 people in parts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha and the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Latin and Odia alphabets are used for Sora along with Sorang Sompeng, and its limited usage is partly explained by the competition with those two majority writing systems.
The Sorang Sompeng or Sora Sompeng alphabet was originally invented by <PERSON> in 1936. His son-in-law <PERSON> was instrumental in promoting it by setting up a letterpress which produced many books.
The alphabet has been used primarily in religious contexts, and that is still the case for those who practice the traditional Sora faith. But as many Sora speakers converted to Christianity and Hinduism over time, and the Bible and other religious texts were translated using Latin and Odia, <PERSON> was gradually sidelined.
In 2012, the alphabet gained a boost by its inclusion in Unicode, a universal encoding standard that allows seamless and cross-platform use (unlike predecessor encoding standards, such as ASCII).
Also in 2012, <PERSON> created her first typeface for Sorang Sompeng, which is now broadly used in print and digital publications despite its low overall adoption.
She hopes her new typeface, which will be available in November 2020, will boost the use of this alphabet among native speakers even more.
Most indigenous communities such as the Sora are under-resourced; only a few can count with experts like <PERSON>. Efforts such as hers help communities to preserve oral knowledge in written form and use the internet to exchange knowledge in their own languages.
On behalf of Rising Voices, I interviewed <PERSON> to learn more about her work in supporting the Sora community.
<PERSON> (SP): Tell us more about your journey to create the Sorang Sompeng typeface.
<PERSON> (SS): First of all, I belong to the Kondha community of Odisha and I am not a native Sora speaker. I got curious after learning about the Sorang Sompeng script and started creating a digital font back December 2012. With no prior experience in type design or any contact with other type designers, I did my own desk research online to learn the basics of type design. I put that to use and referred a Sora book for inspiration that was printed in letterpress. 607
I traced the visual style of the characters and placed them on an existing OpenType Font (OTF) by replacing the existing glyphs. The font was mapped on the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) encoding which is outdated now. In the last eight years, the font has been used by the Sora people for printing books, calendars and invitation cards.
As a Masters in Design student at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, I got the opportunity to work with noted typographer and type researcher Prof. <PERSON>, and I am currently working on a newer version of my old typeface under his guidance.
A computer keyboard with stickers of Sorang Sompeng characters pasted on keys to help users for typing in Sorang Sompeng. Image by <PERSON> (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
SP: Tell us more about the tools and other resources used for Sorang Sompeng.
SS: The typeface that I made back in 2012 is used by many on their computers. Google’s Noto Sans Sora typeface is underway and existing cross-platform input tools like Keyman Sora Basic keyboard can be used to type in Sora. Meanwhile, I invited some of the community experts to review my second typeface, and it is going to be available soon. The Sora community will soon have multiple good quality and modern Unicode-compliant typefaces to choose from.
As a majority of the mobile users are on Android devices, having Sora included in the popular Gboard app would see more mobile use of Sora, especially among the young speakers. Many users currently find it hard to install the Keyman mobile app due to its multi-step app installation process.
Participants of a recent meeting organised by Sony Salma to collect feedback on her upcoming typeface. Image by <PERSON> (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
SP: Could you explain how decisions related to the Sora language and its writing system are made? 607