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Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#51

Post by coliveira »

schnable wrote: post #30

I don't understand how such a widespread writing system (as asserted in the article) could have been overlooked by the colonial rulers, let alone by anyone until 2004. I'm not saying it's not true, but if it is, the explanation is surely more layered that what can be explained simply by asserting colonialism/Euro-centrism, even if that is the root reason. It would be fascinating, and I'd like to hear it!

It is quite simple to understand: Europeans had a vested interest in saying that Africans were all illiterate to justify its oppression. They just disregarded the written script as non-official and continued on this fantasy until very recently.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#52

Post by tgsegsetg »

euler5050 wrote: post #9
trabant00 wrote: post #3

In 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 co…

> by Islamic evangelists to spread the religion to African communities

It didn't work that way.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#53

Post by nemo44x »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #29
nemo44x wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historic revisionism has become very popular so as to make everyone feel better about their ancestors place in the annals of history. That everyone was at the same level and made the same amount of contributions to the modern world, etc. And of course it was the singularly evil colonizers and their descendants that stole this history and claimed it for themselves, etc. To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Wh…

Reminder that historical revisionism is fundamentally just about revisiting and challenging common assumptions and doctrine. It's not accurate to ascribe a common socio-political goal to all people practicing revisionism. It is accurate to say that there are groups who revise history to achieve the purposes you describe. It would perhaps also be accurate to say that revisionists who propose histories that are more so…

Indeed. However I believe a lot of what is being not only published but rushed into curriculums is the political type. Examples kb ES would be the 1619 project or the trend in historical movies to aggregate a group of people into a single character but sell it as factual.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#54

Post by mytailorisrich »

schnable wrote: post #30

I don't understand how such a widespread writing system (as asserted in the article) could have been overlooked by the colonial rulers, let alone by anyone until 2004. I'm not saying it's not true, but if it is, the explanation is surely more layered that what can be explained simply by asserting colonialism/Euro-centrism, even if that is the root reason. It would be fascinating, and I'd like to hear it!

It wasn't overlooked and isn't overlooked. It is well-known.

For instance, the story of this article is in Senegal where there is an official norm and effort to normalise ajami scripts for specific local languages [1] (many of the Wikipedia pages on the topic seem to be only in French).

Overall, the article feels very misleading and politically orientated. There's no 'discovery' apart from the fact that that guy didn't known about it, which is actually strange from a Senegalese person, whose father could write it, and who teaches linguistics. Maybe his father wanted him to be 'modern' and to get a good career and to study in French only (the Senegalese elite tends to speak better French and to know more about French literature than most French...)

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caract%C3%A8res_coraniques_har...

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#55

Post by coliveira »

trabant00 wrote: post #3

In 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.

The discovery mentioned is not of the script itself, but the fact that lots of common people were extensively using it all over Africa. Previously, it was believed that this script was used by a small part of African population, as a result of its distant past. The author has provided samples of this in several countries, and for common use (like for his own family), something that was not believed to be true in modern Africa.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#56

Post by MikeBattaglia »

This article is bizarre. It reads like they've unearthed some long lost Rosetta Stone artifact from thousands of years ago. In reality, these people have "discovered" that everyone right around them writes using this language and this is just how they write and they all know about it. What is the "discovery" here?

Here's what I think: modern Western civilization - to say nothing of historical colonial societies - has attempted to pulverize these cultures utterly: it has removed their spoken and written language, music and art; altered their general societal structure; created a false narrative that they are "savages"; and so on. Some of these events are very recent, and some people involved are even still alive today.

Then, we like to do this thing where we go ahead and "study" the same people whose culture we just destroyed, pretending all the while as if it were an ancient civilization destroyed thousands of years ago through some natural process.

Tens of millions of people are walking around in Africa today who use this language. Now that we have "discovered" this, maybe some day we will also "discover" that they have music, art, jokes, and an entire culture.

No shade on Ngom, though, as I am sure he is doing his best to bring some of these things to light within the Western academic system.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#57

Post by causality0 »

Ngom, who studied Arabic as a second language (the second of 12 languages that the scholar knows), was stunned. He asked his brother, still living in Senegal, to check with the neighbor to whom their father owed money. Sure enough, his brother reported, the trader had a record of the debt, too, in a similar Arabic-turned-Fula script.

What? How do you not know your father can write? How does your brother live somewhere his neighbors write the same language and doesn't know about it? What the hell is going on? This whole story is extremely suspicious.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#58

Post by coliveira »

coldtea wrote: post #22
lukeschlather wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like a significant discovery for the researcher. And it seems like he discovered something that is being deliberately hidden. I'm also curious about what "preoccupations" you're referring to. People are preoccupied with alleviating illiteracy in Africa, it's interesting that these illiteracy figures may be inflated, and it makes me wonder what groups are trying to make Africa look more illiterate than…

> It seems to me like a significant discovery for the researcher. A researcher not being aware of something openly used for centuries and already covered in relevant studies, research literature, symposiums (and even popular articles) well before they learn about it, does not quality them made aware of it as being a "discovery". That's not how the term "discovery" works in an academic context, and certainly it's not…

> It's not like it keeps any communication unreadable or even more difficult to read from the government

If the foreign government can only read French, it sure does it. Especially at a time when there was no google translator.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#59

Post by coliveira »

josh_fyi wrote: post #4
trabant00 wrote: post #3

In 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.

Colonization is not the only way to spread a script. Arabic arrived in Africa by several means, not like European colonization.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#60

Post by Kaibeezy »

seti0Cha wrote: post #43
idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

I have to admit I got discouraged by the implausible narrative and didn't finish reading, so maybe it's addressed, but it seemed very strange to me that this scholar's father, his neighbors, and apparently many others around him, were engaging in writing without him ever noticing. He had "been told that these people were illiterate"...did he not grow up in that community? Why did his brother, who still lives there, n…

Concur. I know absolutely zero about this field and got pulled in by the compelling story but started thinking “no way”. What do we call this? It’s not clickbait per se. A legal term that seems like it sort of fits is “puffing”.

I did have a back-and-forth with Dang a while back about what to watch out for re press releases. He really helped me see the point of going steps beyond to the underlying research, when possible. I’ve tried to do that (or notice when others might have done it) with the most interesting stories, despite the extreme rabbit hole danger. Unfortunately, primary source papers can have uncompelling titles and then the while topic sinks. Still, I’d call that a fair result, and will sometimes flag them up (my own posts and others) for a second chance.

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