My name is Jordan Williams, an African American man of Afro Cuban and Creole descent who was born and raised in the Gulf South region of Texas. I’ve always had a deep fascination with language and culture, particularly in the way they intersect and intertwine. I am passionate about linguistics, natural language processing, and cultural anthropology, with a specific focus on the ritual and expressive use of ideographic systems.
Growing up, I was exposed to a rich tapestry of languages and cultures in my community, which sparked my interest in linguistics and cultural anthropology. I’ve always been fascinated by the way language and culture shape our understanding of the world and each other, particularly in the form of symbols and code. My fascination led me to pursue independent research in linguistics and cultural anthropology, where I was able to delve deeper into my interests and learn more about the intricacies of language and culture, particularly in East Asia and West Africa their diasporas and use of expressive language through ideographic systems in material culture.
I am particularly drawn to the ritual and expressive use of ideographic systems, such as Nsibidi and Chinese calligraphy, and how they are used to convey meaning and express emotion, complex ideas and their present reality today. I’m also interested in natural language processing, a field that combines computer science and linguistics to develop technologies that can interact with humans in natural language. With my passion for language, culture, and technology, I am dedicated to exploring new ways of understanding and communicating with the world around me.
As a passionate writer, I have always been fascinated with the use of visual communication to express internal processes into external expressions in alignment with the natural world around me. For this reason, I have fallen in love with ideographic writing systems. I desire to share that passion with my readers through the medium of Nsibidi and its implications for modern writing. I often watched “bootlegged” movies with Chinese subtitles as a kid and began to pick up the writing. I would read and write about mythology and culture and all kinds of diverse languages. Music was a way of making language come to life and dance solidified that vision of life for me. I followed the Nsibidi project when I was in high school self-learning Chinese while learning Spanish in school. However due to the unfortunate ceasing of the project, I was deterred from learning much of it in-depth until I found out about Chiadikobi Nwaubani’s Nsibiri Blogspot page. Though the previous project ended abruptly, this current initiative of passion I am pursuing seeks to honor the work of Chiadikobi while exploring the neography to new heights.
The purpose of this website is to serve as an initial look at Nsibidi in its modern neo-graphical form and share it as a medium for a revival of Nsibidi writing within Afro-descended communities for linguistic and cultural expression and documentation. This website also clarifies and distinguishes between public and private esoteric writing with Nsibidi characters. The website will serve as a tool in distinguishing the writing and liturgical expressions of Leopard Society Nsibidi writing compared to the public mass communication form of Nsibidi. This website also pays homage to the massive contributions of Chiadikobi Nwaubani with his research of the languages and cultures of Southeastern and Southern Nigeria for the creation of the Neo-Nsibidi project (2010). This website will also serve as a conduit for cross-cultural communication, awareness and literacy due to the nature of Nsibidi. Nsibidi as a writing system was used for multiple languages and cultures to communicate and trade through symbols. In this same spirit, Kwa-Nsibidi fosters cross-cultural awareness through the reading and understanding of radical morphemes