Why was Graphite developed?
SIL International is a non-profit organization that performs linguistic research, literacy development, and translation work among ethnic minorities around the world. Our members are currently working with approximately a thousand language groups on six continents, and increasingly, many of the areas in which we work use scripts that require complex rendering. Traditionally, much of our work has been with preliterate groups, or those that are literate only in a national or trade language. In cases where there is no written form for the target language, orthography development is a significant part of our field workers’ literacy promotion efforts. There are a variety of linguistic, sociological, cultural, and political factors that play into the orthography issue, and often it is necessary to adapt the script of the national language for use with minority languages. The minority languages are usually quite distinct from the national language, much less closely related in a linguistic se
