About the script and this tool

What it is

isiBheqe soHlamvu, in Sesotho Ditema tsa Dinoko, is a writing system for the siNtu (southern Bantu) languages. It is a featural syllabary: each block is one syllable, and the parts of the block show how the sound is made. It is written from left to right [5].

It is meant for the whole family of related languages, among them isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenḓa and Xitsonga, and also languages that have no settled Latin spelling of their own, such as Khelobedu, siPhuthi and Sepulana [6].

Who made it, and when

The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets dates the script to between 2010 and 2015 and credits a group of linguists and designers. It names Pule kaJanolintshi as one of the designers [6], as does a 2023 Unicode status report [5]. The project's teaching booklet, dated 2016, carries the names Pule kaJanolintshi and Taurai Valerie Mtake [2].

The first keyboard software was written by Baruch Lubinsky between September and October 2015, working from a specification sheet dated 23 July 2015 [4] [9].

No source consulted here gives a full list of the people involved. If you were one of them, or know who was, please say so.

Where the forms come from

The project says the script is derived from izimpawu zesintu, the traditional symbols of the region, and names Sesotho litema as one of them [1].

• Litema is Sotho mural art: geometric patterns that Basotho women make on the walls of homes in Lesotho and nearby parts of South Africa. The patterns are not permanent and are washed away by rain [8]. The Atlas adds that the Sesotho word means both text and ploughed land [6].
• The Atlas also points to isiNdebele mural painting, and to basketry, beadwork and pottery, and describes this knowledge as traditionally kept by women [6].
• Amabheqe is, according to Wikipedia, the isiZulu name for beadwork that carries meaning, and the script takes its isiZulu name from it [7].
• The project's site also names Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa's record of the symbols used by traditional healers, and Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz's book on Kongo graphic writing, as accounts of this kind of symbol [1].

The booklet opens with four of these older symbols and their isiZulu names: a triangle pointing up, one pointing down, two joined at the point, and two joined at the base [2]. The first two are also the script's shapes for the vowels i and a. The names are listed on the Learn page.

Colour

Colour belongs to the traditions the script grew from. The Atlas notes that a colour in beadwork may carry a mood or a meaning that is not a word [6]. The project's own guide has a section on colours [1], and the back of its booklet shows a line of the script with the spaces inside each block filled in colour [2].

That is why this tool lets you fill the parts of a glyph. It gives colours no meanings. What a colour means differs from place to place and is not something this page can state.

Why it was made

The project presents the script as an alternative to the Latin alphabet and as a free cultural technology [1]. It also suggests the script may be more efficient to read than the Latin alphabet, and links to research on reading speed.

That research is a study by Sandra Land at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, reported in 2017. She tracked the eyes of skilled adult readers and found that isiZulu in Latin letters took about twice as long to read as English, with about a fifth more pauses of the eye. She concluded that the Latin alphabet may not have been the best fit for isiZulu. The same report quotes the linguist Mark de Vos suggesting that a syllabic script might have been easier to read [3].

The study did not test isiBheqe soHlamvu or any other syllabic script. Whether the script is faster to read has not, as far as these sources show, been measured.

Where it stands

• In 2023 a Unicode status report said the script was being taught at three South African universities: the University of South Africa, the University of Mpumalanga and the University of Johannesburg [5].
• The same report said no proposal to add the script to Unicode had yet been made, and that Pule kaJanolintshi had voiced support for whoever begins one [5]. Until the script is in Unicode it cannot be typed as ordinary text, which is why this tool draws pictures.
• The Atlas reports that a South African clothing company has used the script in its designs, and says it is too early to tell how widely the script will be taken up [6].

This tool

This is a revised edition of Baruch Lubinsky's 2015 keyboard, which the project's site offers as its writing software [1]. The glyphs are drawn exactly as his code drew them. An automatic test compares the two, stroke by stroke, for every vowel with every consonant and every pair of consonants.

It is an independent edition. It is not run or endorsed by the isiBheqe soHlamvu project, whose own site is isibheqe.org.za. The project and Baruch Lubinsky were written to in November 2026, and the offer to hand this edition over to them stands.

• Two things differ on purpose: one placement of the nasal-vowel dot now follows the specification sheet, and lines of text sit closer together.
• Typing in ordinary isiZulu spelling follows an idea from Tracy's 2020 version of the tool [10].
• The spelling rules were worked out from the project's chart and booklet. They are a reading by outsiders and may contain mistakes.
• Punctuation, and the shape for a consonant with no vowel, are not drawn yet.
• Headings are set in Bricolage Grotesque by Mathieu Triay, and the phonetic labels in a reduced copy of SIL's Charis. Both typefaces are under the SIL Open Font License and are served with the page.
• The two bands of ornament were drawn for this site and are not copies of any piece of beadwork or any wall. The band at the top is two rows of the script's own triangle, which meet as the diamond and the hourglass that open the project's booklet [2]. The band at the foot is one square cell of combed lines, mirrored from cell to cell, which is how litema are laid out on a wall [8].

The tool is free to use and share under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, the same licence as the original software and the project's booklet. It does not track you, and it has no accounts.

Corrections

This page and the Learn page were written from the sources below, not from inside the community that made and uses the script. If something is wrong, missing or badly put, please open an issue or propose a change in the project repository. People who write the script, and speakers of the languages it serves, have the last word.

Sources

All read on 10 November 2026.

1. isiBheqe soHlamvu / Ditema tsa Dinoko, the project's site, including its guide page. isibheqe.org.za
2. Pule kaJanolintshi and Taurai Valerie Mtake, Incazo Yohlelo lwesiBheqe Sohlamvu (Explanation of the isiBheqe soHlamvu writing system), 2016. CC BY-NC-SA. PDF. Also the project's 2015 chart, PDF.
3. “Research on eye movements while reading isiZulu”, University of KwaZulu-Natal news, 18 January 2017. ukzn.ac.za
4. “Isibheqe Sohlamvu keyboard specifications”, 23 July 2015. Kept with this tool's source, in the docs folder.
5. “Update on Usage and Implementation Status of African Scripts”, Unicode document L2/23-203, 8 September 2023. PDF
6. “Ditema tsa Dinoko”, Atlas of Endangered Alphabets. endangeredalphabets.net
7. “Ditema tsa Dinoko”, Wikipedia. A secondary source; only part of the article could be checked word for word. en.wikipedia.org
8. “Litema”, Wikipedia, citing Paulus Gerdes, “On Mathematical Ideas in Cultural Traditions of Central and Southern Africa”, in Mathematics Across Cultures, 2001. en.wikipedia.org
9. Baruch Lubinsky, isibheqe, 2015. Dates are from the history of the source code. github.com/baruchlubinsky/isibheqe
10. Tracy, isibheqe (a version with isiZulu and chiShona typing), 2020. github.com/torazem/isibheqe

Not yet read for this page

• L. Simpson, “From icons to identities: Analysing visual cultural elements in emerging scripts”, Visible Language 58(2), 2024.
• Garreth van Niekerk, “Indigenous alphabet on the cards for SA”, City Press, 8 February 2016.
• Pule kaJanolintshi and Napjadi Letsoalo, “Introducing orthography and writing systems”, an open educational resource from the University of South Africa.
• S. Schoeman, “Eloquent Beads: The Semantics of a Zulu Art Form”, Africa Insight 13(2), 1983.
• Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign.