Adyghe “ancient” alphabet

Ian James & Mattias Persson
© June 2012

script name

The Ancient Adyghe or Mifo-Circassian script was designed recently by R.I. Daur and his son I.Yu. Daur, using shapes found in ancient Caucasian epigraphy. It is intended for use with the West Circassian language Adyghe, of the Caucasian language family. More information can be found (in Russian) on the inventor’s websites www.ethnic-cinema-country.ru/kalligrafia and www.apsnyteka.org.

The Alphabet

This script follows the phonetics of the language (and neighbouring languages) very closely. This alone is enough to show how modern it is; but notice too the use of consistent attached features to show rounding, ejective, etc. There is a nice effect in having only a few glyphs constrained to the upper channel. This chart was created by Mattias Persson, and shows the generic (non-calligraphic) forms:

 
full chart

Example

This is taken from one of the inventor’s webpages. It shows a nice printed form using a font which captures the best features of the script.

example text

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All material on this page © Ian James & Mattias Persson, unless otherwise stated.
Last modified Jun.16,2012