The world is facing a language crisis. Of its c.7,000 languages, Glottolog estimates that only 35% are safe - the rest are at varying stages of being threatened, moribund or nearly extinct. In some cases, it is already too late.  

Research has shown the powerful effects of safeguarding linguistic diversity, which enhances people's wellbeing, supports minority rights and enables access to key indigenous knowledge that could make a great difference in the battle to protect our climate. But how can we try to preserve the languages in danger of loss and help their communities to pass them on to the next generation? 

One weapon in the language maintenance arsenal is writing. Writing a language down confers some important advantages, such as the ability to produce printed or online educational materials and to communicate long-distance. Ultimately it makes the language visible as well as audible, giving another facet to the expression of cultural identity. 

However, minoritised and endangered languages are often the ones at the greatest disadvantage when it comes to writing. Many have not been written down in a consistent way (some not at all), or if they have then they are written in a majority (often colonial) writing system. Some languages have their own visually distinctive system, but typically with very small numbers of users and a struggle to gain any wider acceptance: the Endangered Alphabets project estimates that 85-90% of the world's distinctive writing traditions are at risk of being lost.

There are no generally accepted principles for the most effective way to write a language, other than abstract linguistic principles - for instance that it should be possible to represent all of the language’s distinctive sounds (phonemes). This is where historical examples may help.  

When we look at an ancient or medieval language, especially a well documented one, it is possible to study its long-term trajectory, including periods when it had high “vitality” and periods when it began to go out of use (as numerous historical languages have done). We can also study developments in the way it was written down, the type of writing system chosen and its distribution - who was writing it down, where and when.  

At the VIEWS project - Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems - we are working on both the way writing looks and the ways it is seen. For instance, why do users choose or develop particular shapes or styles for the characters of their writing system? And where do they write and read and display text? The answers to both questions can be illuminating. Our main case studies are mostly from the ancient world, from the Americas, the Mediterranean, western Asia and northern Africa. 

Ancient Cyprus offers a particularly important example of writing system use with some surprising ramifications for endangered languages today. Throughout the first millennium BCE, the islanders wrote their Greek dialect in an old syllabic system that had existed for hundreds of years.

Cypriot Syllabic writing had about 55 characters and looked very different to nearby contemporary writing systems. You could say that this system had a very poor linguistic fit for the dialect: several Greek phonemes could not be distinguished from each other, and it was difficult to write consonant clusters and consonants at the end of words (frequently encountered in Greek) because of the type of syllables encoded.  

So, writing the Cypriot Greek dialect in the Cypriot Syllabic script involved complex spelling rules and necessitated tolerance of potential ambiguity. You might think that would put people off using it (indeed, why not use the contemporary alphabet popular with Greek speakers elsewhere?).

But ancient Cypriots seem to have been very fond of their writing system. Royal dynasties used it in monumental inscriptions, but it was also used widely for religious, administrative, funerary and all sorts of everyday purposes. Local styles of syllabic writing, including writing in different directions, were enthusiastically embraced, and graffiti are common. There is some evidence of social and gender diversity in writing, and tourists and mercenaries even added Cypriot Syllabic graffiti to monuments in Egypt (including a block of the Great Pyramid!). Cypriot Greek was written in this distinctive system for nearly a thousand years. 

The traits of Cypriot Syllabic writing give important clues to what can make a writing system successful - and therefore what can make writing a helpful support to a minority or endangered language. Close linguistic fit was much less important to users than the distinctive Cypriot appearance of the system, establishing a link with the islanders’ linguistic and cultural identity. High social visibility was also a significant characteristic: prominent inscriptions in urban and religious centres for instance, or on everyday items like pots and coins.