This website attempts to collate scholarly articles, opinion pieces and notes pertaining to languages that use the akshara writing system. While this may seem like an easily defined area of exploration, the reality is far more complex. Researchers of the akshara languages are routinely confronted with some of the most vexing questions facing current cognitive science research.   The contexts are often multilingual, literacy learning is rarely in only one script and learning environments are diverse.  We are in the midst of an unprecedented rise in collaborations across languages, writing systems and socio-cultural contexts. Practitioners are driven by the urgency to ensure all children learn to read with ease and enjoyment, and researchers are taking advantage of new technologies and analytic approaches. We aim to capture some of the exciting developments in the field as they evolve and go public.

Lingua Akshara is a coming together of professional contributions from multiple disciplines: education, psychology, linguistics, speech and language sciences, cognitive neuroscience, computer science and sociology, to name a few. Researchers, clinicians and educators working in the akshara languages will find something of value on this website. You will find Resources that can help shape your research agenda or re-think the way in which you teach or intervene in the field of language and literacy.

Lingua Akshara grew out of the first International Symposium on Language, Literacy and Cognitive Development (LLCd) held in December, 2011 in Bangalore, India.  The profiles of presenters and the proceedings are also archived here.

We look forward to your engagement with Lingua Akshara!

Watch this space for updates

           NEW!

• On Literacy Learning: Some old and some new constructs - Sonali Nag                                                                                       
• Aksharas, Alphasyllabaries, Abugidas, Alphabets and Orthographic Depth: Reflections on Rimzhim, Katz and Fowler (2014) – David Share and Peter Daniels  

• Alphabetism in Reading Science - David Share
  

• Investigating the Asymmetrical Roles of Syllabic and Phonemic Awareness Role in Akshara Processing  - Pooja R. Nakamura et al. 

• Dyslexia and Hyperlexia in Bilinguals - R. Malatesha Joshi et al.
  

• A Template for the Analysis of Primary School Language Textbooks in Indian Languages (Pilot Version, 2014) - Shaher Banu Vagh and Sonali Nag
  

• The Song that Changed my Life : Stories on Multi-lingual Education from Chhattisgarh - Sheshagiri K.M
  

• Effect of synthetic phonics instruction on literacy skills in an ESL setting - Surendranath P. Nishanimut et al. 

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• Numerals in the adaptation of Tamil script to writing Sourashtram - Christopher Miller                                              
• Selective L2 cognate retrieval deficit in a bilingual person with aphasia: A case report - Shivani Tiwari and Gopee Krishnan                                                                                 
• Orthographic constraints on phonological awareness in biliteracy development - Pooja Reddy and Keiko Koda            
• Biliteracy acquisition in Kannada and English: a developmental study - Pooja R. Nakamura, Keiko Koda and Malt Joshi                                                                              
• Facilitating reading acquisition in multilingual environments in India - Pooja Nakamura and Thomas de Hoop                                                                                     
• Oral language and learning to read - Sonali Nag                                                                                                      
• Reading & Writing: Insights from the Alphasyllabaries of South and Southeast Asia - Sonali Nag & Charles A. Perfetti                                                                                     
• The Bangla-Asamiya script and its representation in Unicode - Probal Dasgupta and Gautam Sengupta                                                                                
• Telugu OCR framework using deep learning - Rakesh Achanta and Trevor Hastie                                                                                                                                              
• Salient phonetic features of Indian languages in speech technology - Peri Bhaskararao                                                                                                                                       
• Phonetic transcription system for Indian languages and Indian English - Arpita Ray                                                                                                                             

• LLCd 2011 Book of Abstracts                                                          

• Picasa Link to LLCd Web Album
  

Some images of akshara inscriptions

Spreading across South and South East Asia are several aesthetically distinctive akshara scripts that have their roots in Brahmi, the ancient writing system of Central India. The scripts stand out both for their visual features as well as the ingenuity with which they represent sounds in the language.  While the uninitiated hardly manage to get past the bewildering set of dashes, loops and squiggles of these writing systems, to those in the know, the commonalities in the symbol architecture of each avatar is immediately familiar.