Osage
A purpose-built alphabet made in the 21st century so the Osage language could be written on its own terms — free of the ambiguities the Latin alphabet imposed.
Curatorial note
Osage is a 21st-century alphabet made for a single, deliberate purpose: to reclaim a language. The Osage language had been written in Latin-based spellings that were inconsistent and, worse, carried the sound-habits of English into a language that does not share them.
Herman Mongrain Lookout, directing the Osage Nation's language program, developed a dedicated script through the 2000s so that Osage could be written on its own terms, without the ambiguities the Latin alphabet imposed. It was refined over years of teaching, encoded in Unicode in 2016, and is now used in the Nation's language-reclamation work.
A new alphabet, made so a language could be written as itself.
It is a designed alphabet with a modern brief — clarity for learners and independence from English orthographic habits. The institute files it not under ancient descent but among the named designers of the Inventors' Room, alongside the other scripts that begin with a person and a purpose.
A script for a reclamation
Designed to end an ambiguityThe brief was concrete. Osage had been set in Latin letters whose spellings were inconsistent from writer to writer and shaped by the sound-habits of English — a language whose vowels and consonants do not line up with Osage's. The remedy was a clean, one-sound-one-letter fit: an alphabet built for Osage's own inventory, so a learner reading a letter would know exactly which sound it named.
The letters
A representative sampleA purpose-built alphabet of the 2010s; the institute shows a representative sample and does not assign uncertain values (provenance-first).
Specimen — Noto Sans Osage
Waterfall on baseline gridIn the building
In the Reading Room
Written As Itself
How Herman Mongrain Lookout built a new alphabet in the 2000s so the Osage language could be written free of the ambiguities English spelling had imposed on it.
Plaque sources: The Unicode Standard (Osage block U+104B0–U+104FF) · ISO 15924 (Osge · 219) · accounts of the Osage Nation language program and Herman Mongrain Lookout · ScriptSource (SIL). Letters shown are representative; uncertain values are not assigned. Compiled 2026-07.