Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#2In this adaptation of Arabic script, it seems like the harakat (vowel markers) are obligatory, and much larger than standard Arabic. I always wondered why the pre-reform Turkish language forfeited vowel identifiers. It works for Arabic, but many other languages need vowels for disambiguation.
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#3In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#4In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
Indeed, just as French language and Latin-based orthographies for languages in this reason are the result of a colonial legacy, so too the use of Arabic as a prestige language (mentioned in this article) and an Arabic-based orthography.
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#5In this adaptation of Arabic script, it seems like the harakat (vowel markers) are obligatory, and much larger than standard Arabic. I always wondered why the pre-reform Turkish language forfeited vowel identifiers. It works for Arabic, but many other languages need vowels for disambiguation.
Interesting, reminds me of Sorani (Kurdish), with a script similar to Perso-Arabic , where only some, short vowels are represented using markers. This means that you end up with less connected characters which makes it visually stand out compared to say, Persian, Arabic or Urdu.
examples:
- Sorani: سوور sûr for red, که ر kar for donkey (note the double و and ه in the middle of the word), and
- Persian: سور sur (an old word for red, currently unused besides some festival names IIRC), خر khar (donkey)
This makes Kurdish actually much easier to read (non need to memorise the typical vowel patterns as in Arabic or Persian) since the writing is mostly aligned with pronunciation.
Weirdly enough, if we discard the current cultural context (English as the lingua franca) for a new speaker of an Indo-European language, learning Sorani from writing might be easier than picking up English (Ghoti and chips anyone?).
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#6In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
It wasn't any enormous discovery. The particular academic in the article might have learned this thing existed from his father scribbles, but it has been a thing for centuries and has been studied in the past. They could have just learn about it by studing the literature.
It's more about getting more publicity for it, and getting the library and digitization program mentioned in the article going. That should have been the angle in the article.
>Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
They're examples of an appeal to current forms of orientalism and colonialism: just spin the story in an angle Americans and Europeans will be sympathetic to, because of their own preoccupations, in order to keep the grants going.
Focused on how these scripts were used for close to a millenium, before European colonialism was established in those parts, and arising under practical needs (they had the language, arabs had the script), wouldn't make such an enticing story to modern audiences.
Now peoples there speaking French or varieties of Dutch/German, or having their upper classes follow European norms and fashions and shun their own legacy, that's cultural colonialism in Africa (aside the economic, political, and millitary one).
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#7In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#8I wonder how you can tell the underlying language when you have multiple languages sharing the same script?
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#9In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script you can find references from 1971 and 1982. I find it hard to understand how this could be "an enormous discovery" in 2004. Nor do I understand the numerous mentions of European colonialism in the article.
Did you read the article? European colonialism is directly relevant to the subject of the article and the connection is explicitly explained.
"Ajami, from the Arabic word ʿAjamī, meaning “non-Arabic” or “foreign,” was created centuries ago by Islamic evangelists to spread the religion to African communities. Over generations, it was adopted by members of anticolonial nationalist resistance movements throughout the continent, as French and English colonists installed their own languages and customs."
Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
#10I wonder how you can tell the underlying language when you have multiple languages sharing the same script?
It's phonetic, and these are all living languages. All you need to know is what characters correspond to which phonemes and you need someone who can speak enough words of the language.