Dedicated font for Indigenous languages a sign of reconciliation and respect, Musqueam project member says

A new font to typeset Salish Indigenous languagesmeans so much more than just the words it will be used towrite, one of the people behind its creation says.

Vanessa Campbell, a Musqueam band member and staff member in its language and culture department, was part of a team from theUniversity of British Columbia (UBC) that designed a new font that allowscharacters from the Musqueam language to not only be easily typed ona computer, but to match the formal institutional font used onuniversity documentation and signs.

Most of the characters in theMusqueam language's name hnqminm,pronounced HUN-kuh-mee-num aren't available on an Englishlanguage keyboard.

Campbell said it has taken four years of work to get the fontright and that the project is an example of reconciliation in action, as well as a sign ofrespect for the Indigenous people whose land the university is on.

"As a Musqueam woman, UBC acknowledging the importance of beingable to respectfully represent my language in their space, on myterritory, through the branding font that they use, it's inherentlycreated this space of mutual respect and caring for this languagethat I spendmy whole life working on,'' she said.

"I love that I can just type in Whitney, but there's so muchmore emotional importance to the partnership that was created aroundthis font,'' she said, referring to the font's name of WhitneySalishan.

Digital font challenges

Hnqminm was traditionally an oral language, but over the last fewdecades the Musqueam have begun deciding how to put it into writing.

Leaders chose the North American phonetic alphabet since itoffered sounds used in their language that aren't available with theLatin alphabet used in modern English.

Matt Warburton, brand and marketing design manager for UBC, said the phonetic alphabet has created uniquechallenges in the digital world.

Only a few computer fonts recognize the characters, he said,meaning anyone who wants to use the language is limited in theiroptions or forced to switch fonts mid-sentence.

"It basically just looks like somebody kind of crammedsomething in as an afterthought after the fact, which is reallydisrespectful of another language,"he said.

"You know, we wouldn't do that with French, we wouldn't do itwith any of the Asian languages. It's just something that's notdone,"Warburton said.

Syilx,too

The new font is also capable of typesetting the language of theSyilx, a nation located in the same area as the university'sOkanagan campus.

The university's institutional font, used in most of its brandedsigns and documents, is called Whitney.

For years before thecreation of Whitney Salishan, Warburton said they would manuallydesign characters in the Musqueam and Syilx languages whenever theuniversity needed them for a project.

He said the work was important but time consuming.

Now that the new font can be uploaded to university computers,Warburton said he has given out about 100 licences and expects morerequests.

The next steps will be creating a version that can be used on theuniversity's websites, and to expand to accommodate more Indigenouslanguages.

Eventually, it's expected that licences for the font willbe sold to the public from the company that helped create it andowns both Whitney and Whitney Salishan.

Campbell said she hopes the font will be used more around hercommunity.

"I am most excited to start using it in spaces where weare actively working to incorporate [the Musqueam language]backinto the land,'' she said.

When the font was first completed, Warburton used it to type upparts of a Musqueam legend, displaying different thickness of thefont to show how it could be used.

Campbell said that even though she had spent years going throughthe design and approval process for individual characters, seeingthem all together at once was emotional.

"I've never seen my language look so beautiful on paper," she said.