About

A script grown from everyday Ndebele life.

Not a replacement for any language: a visual tool for translation, learning and cultural imagination. It is still in progress, and needs cultural review and speakers.

Goal

Why this exists

Bhalasiko explores how a writing system can grow from forms found in everyday Ndebele life, not as a replacement for existing languages, but as a visual tool for translation, learning, and cultural imagination.

Isiko is an experimental script inspired by geometric, object-based forms associated with Ndebele visual culture. The app makes that experiment usable: type text, render it as Isiko, listen to it, and practice reading it aloud.

The work is still in progress. It needs cultural review, language feedback, clearer references, and more speaker-led practice data before it can claim to be complete.

01

Translator

A writing surface that translates text into Zulu or Xhosa, then renders the result through the Isiko engine.

Open

02

Renderer

A custom glyph system that groups consonants and vowels, positions marks contextually, and draws Isiko text with consistent spacing.

Open

03

Speak

A practice mode for reading Isiko prompts aloud, checking spoken words, and giving progressive visual feedback.

Open

Five letters we added

The original script has no f, g, x, y or z. These are our proposals, not Osmond Tshuma's work, and are open to correction.

A modified version

Five letters we added

The original Isiko script gives forms to sixteen consonants and five vowels. It has none for f, g, x, y and z, which Zulu, Xhosa and Ndebele use all the time, so words used to break into Latin letters halfway through.

Bhalasiko fills that gap with five letters of its own, which makes this a modified version of the script. They follow the original method: start from an object or a piece of the surroundings in everyday Ndebele life and reduce it to one line of the same weight and height as the rest. They are our proposals, not Osmond Tshuma's work, and they are open to correction.

F

umFula

river

Water drawn as one unbroken line that bends, runs back on itself and bends again, the way a river crosses flat country.

G

isiGubhu

drum

The skin is the bar across the top, reaching past the body on both sides where it is pegged down; the body narrows to its foot. Sound sits naturally in a script meant to be read aloud.

X

ukuXhawula

to shake hands

Two open hands hooked into each other. The x is a click made where two parts of the mouth meet and part, so the letter is two shapes meeting; it also avoids borrowing the Latin cross.

Y

inYanga

moon; healer

The crescent moon, which gives its name to the month and to the healer who works by it. It is drawn as an outline, two arcs meeting at the horns, so it keeps the same line weight as every other letter.

Z

iZulu

sky, weather, lightning

The sky at the moment it is most itself: a bolt in three strokes. It answers the rain shrine already in the script (j).

Who did what

Original project site

Isiko by Osmond Tshuma.

View original project

Designer and creator of concept and script

Osmond Tshuma.

More about Osmond Tshuma

Developer

Eddie Sosera.

More about Engineered Imagination

The homestead, its objects and its painted walls

Modelled and drawn for Bhalasiko from the references listed below. They are our own proposals: no real home, no real piece and no painter's wall has been copied, and all of it is open to correction.

Walk the homestead

The surfaces of the homestead

The mud, the thatch, the earth, the wood, the clay and the stone are photographs of real surfaces, laid over our own models. They are free material sets from Poly Haven and ambientCG, given to the public domain by the people who made them. None was photographed in Matobo, and no hide could be had: the nap of a cloth stands in for it.

Thatch Roof Angled, Poly HavenClay Plaster, Poly HavenRed Mud Stones, Poly HavenWithered Grass, Poly HavenRough Wood, Poly HavenBark Willow 02, Poly HavenClay 001, ambientCGFabric 084, ambientCGFabric Leather 02, Poly HavenWicker 013, ambientCGRock Boulder Dry, Poly Haven

The rocks, the leaves and the twigs

The hills, the kopjes and the rocks by the path are scans of real boulders, and the thorn trees' leaves and twigs are photographs of real ones, all from Poly Haven and given to the public domain by the people who made them. None is from Matobo. The boulders are from Poly Haven's Namaqualand collection; the leaves are a jacaranda's, which are feathered as a thorn tree's are; the twigs are a wild rooibos bush's. The blossom of the cassia is our own model.

Namaqualand Boulder 04, Poly HavenNamaqualand Boulder 05, Poly HavenNamaqualand Boulder 06, Poly HavenJacaranda Tree, Poly HavenWild Rooibos Bush, Poly Haven

The sound of the homestead

The wind, the crickets, the thunder and the footsteps are made in the browser as the walk goes. The narrator is not a person. It is a synthetic voice, ElevenLabs' Neo - Calm & Controlled, reading words written for this page. The voice has no isiNdebele: it says the isiNdebele words as Zulu, which is close kin and is written alike, and how near that comes is waiting on a speaker's ear.

ElevenLabs

Made with

The homestead is modelled in Blender and drawn in the browser with three.js. Its model is packed with Draco, which Google publishes under the Apache License 2.0.

Blenderthree.jsDraco

Intro photographs

The opening sequence uses historical and contemporary images from Wikimedia Commons, shared in the public domain or under Creative Commons licences. Images are cropped and colour-treated.

Contribute

The project needs people who can help make the script more accurate, respectful, speakable and useful.

  1. 01Language review for Zulu, Xhosa, isiNdebele, and pronunciation examples.
  2. 02Cultural review of references, symbols, naming, and public-facing explanations.
  3. 03More practice prompts, recorded phrases, and speech examples from fluent speakers.
  4. 04Engineering support for speech scoring, text-to-speech, accessibility, and mobile polish.

References

Painted homes in Matobo