Cool. Do you have plans for Windows and macOS frontends?
Windows is supported through https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim-wish
Oh, didn't realize that. How does it handle key input in Windows? Text Services Framework or something else?
Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#32Is this being done in collaboration with the Linguistics faculties of African universities?
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#33I've visited all the links and honestly still don't have the slightest idea what this input method does, or exactly what problem it's trying to solve, or why it's a good solution to the problem. I found the video [1] but it has no audio or explanations at all. I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods, rather than wanting to input your desired character directly. For languages like Chinese I under…
> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods
I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type.
In our daily communication, when we text, whether with friends or family, we often switch between English, French, or Moroccan dialects. When writing in Moroccan dialect, we frequently use a phonetic system (read in french way) that combines the Latin alphabet with numbers to represent specific sounds or letters that don’t have a direct equivalent in the Latin script.
For example:
ق is replaced by "q"
ع is replaced by "3"
خ is replaced by "5" (though "kh" is more common)
غ is replaced by "4" (or "gh")
The rest is just a 1 to 1 conversion to how the letter sounds in french
Bro, I woke up and had a sick breakfast.
Sat, 3ad fe9t o drabt wa7d ftor khatir.
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows is supported through https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim-wish
Oh, didn't realize that. How does it handle key input in Windows? Text Services Framework or something else?
The initial work was a prototype, we are currently working on the usage of text service for windows, and IBUS for Linux (mainly Wayland environment).
But the next release, will take a time, since we are not familiar with these technologies. https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim/issues/242
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#35Apart from Ethiopia, are there any places where they don't use either Latin or Arabic scripts in everyday life? There are technically a whole bunch of alphabets of course but they aren't used much afaik. Maybe the Tuareg script? Is that used by people in North Africa beyond bilingual signs?
North african here! For Moroccan arabic dialect, we mostly use latin alphabets and some numbers to replace some sounds/letters
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#36I'm wondering what problem you experienced that this is a solution for.
"African languages" is not, in my experience, a single class of languages. There are large differences between the languages, with most of the northern languages borrowing heavily from Arabic, most of the central African/West African languages borrowing from French and the rest are different enough that they can't be considered dialects.
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#37It's interesting to see African input methods taking inspiration from a Chinese IME, RIME. Would like to know more about this!
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#38I've visited all the links and honestly still don't have the slightest idea what this input method does, or exactly what problem it's trying to solve, or why it's a good solution to the problem. I found the video [1] but it has no audio or explanations at all. I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods, rather than wanting to input your desired character directly. For languages like Chinese I under…
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Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#39Similar to other commenters, I am curious to know what is the problem with african languages? Can't you just make a button for each character in the alphabet? (The readme mentions it is a phonetic-based input method, so I assume African languages use alphabets, not some logograms, right?) What is common for African languages that allows solving the problem for all of them together in one software package? (How meanin…
Ge'ez and its adaptations are abugidas, which means one symbol is a full syllable. For Amharic there are over 200 individual symbols. [0] That would be a big keyboard! It does seem that most in-use languages in Africa are alphabets or abjads, which could be adapted to keyboards. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script#Ge%CA%BDez_w... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa
Thanks.
So probably the user on the video types in a phonetic approximation of the words using the latin alphabet, and the software translates it to the abugida symbols?
Seems plausable, especially because he types several latin characters to get one symbol.
Interesting to note that sometimes he also uses digits.
Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages
#40Apart from Ethiopia, are there any places where they don't use either Latin or Arabic scripts in everyday life? There are technically a whole bunch of alphabets of course but they aren't used much afaik. Maybe the Tuareg script? Is that used by people in North Africa beyond bilingual signs?
North african here! For Moroccan arabic dialect, we mostly use latin alphabets and some numbers to replace some sounds/letters
It looks a little bit similar to the working of the clafrica code to type in General Alphabet of Cameroonian languages.
Clafrica: Pookai2t peu2nze2e2 n*kut !
Shʉ̄pāpə̀m (Bamoun): Pookɛ́t pә́nzéé ŋkut !