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Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#71

Post by naijaboiler »

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…

you have to understand racist effect of colonialism - intended or not. With western based colonial structures gaining ascendancy in late 1800s to 1960s, literacy de facto came to mean literate in western languages (or literate in native languages using western letters/alphabest). In many places, that remained the accepted definition of literacy even after the French/English/Portguese colonialists left. So it is very possible, that the author's dad would have been considered illiterate even though he was indeed very literate in a language and writing structure that is not western at all.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#72

Post by peter_retief »

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…

The story felt improbable to me as well, so what if some people used Arabic text for making notes, not that unusual.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#73

Post by coldtea »

coliveira wrote: post #58
coldtea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It was precisely "at a time when there was no google translator" that governments, and especially colonial French and British related governments, notorious for it, had a great supply of bureucrats, bilingual employees, and lower staff versed in both languages, supplementary translators, local spys, native aristocracy, allies, and enforcers, and even whole swaths of scholars studing the occupied cultures...

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#75

Post by starkd »

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…

> What Ngom realized—slowly, and then with a bang—is that his father’s notes were just the beginning. He had proof that a centuries-old writing system was still thriving in many African countries.

Still in wide use? It seems there are many inconsistencies and red flags to indicate a PR stunt. They just discovered a new system of writing that is in wide use?

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#76

Post by wara23arish »

scythe wrote: post #35
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #2

In 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.

Ottoman authorities banned the production of Arabic/Turkish texts using the printing press in the 16th century. As a result, the first printed publication in the Ottoman Empire was in Hebrew! This enormous act of self-sabotage probably kept the alphabets in the Muslim world from standardizing during the 1500s-1800s as the Europeans had, so variations in writing remained common. Pre-1400s texts from Europe look weird,…

Lebanese were printing in 1610 in both Arabic and Syriac.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Lebanon#Press

The link actually says its the first publication in the middle east.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#77

Post by dmix »

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…

From the article:

> He found this modified Arabic script everywhere. Shopkeepers kept records with it and poets wrote sprawling verses in it. Ngom discovered religious texts, medical diagnoses, advertisements, love poems, business records, contracts, and writings on astrology, ethics, morality, history, and geography, all from people who were considered illiterate by the official governmental standards of their countries.

It was apparently everywhere. The most charitable interpretation is they are putting a lot of weight into "illiterate by the official governmental standards of their countries." Which probably just means they couldn't speak/write French or lingua franca such as Arabic? Or maybe just the stereotypes existing outside of Africa, not that the local colonial workers never noticed it existed.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#78

Post by seti0Cha »

anonymousDan wrote: post #61
seti0Cha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Well, isn't it? Human history is a bloody affair from the first days of farming to today. History is a long series of wrongs. How shall we undo them?

How about recognising wrongs as a first step?

Which wrongs do you think we have yet to recognize? Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that we (by which I mean modern American and European society) have taken a pretty thorough inventory in the last few decades, at least of our own failings.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#79

Post by coldtea »

lukeschlather wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

From an American standpoint I (and in fact my government) is pluralistic and opposed to the idea of an official language, so if you tell me someone is illiterate because they don't speak the official language, you mean something different from what I mean.

Such a standpoint is not pertinent to Africa (and most parts of the world) though. In the regional reality, such people, on top of their poverty, have trouble participating in society and business above a certain level, precisely because of a language barrier.

Not that different from the US, come to think of it. There are some real multilanguage countries on Earth, where two or three or more languages have an equal footing, but that is not it.

The "American standpoint" might be "pluralistic and opposed to the idea of an official language" in abstract theory and as seen from an ivory tower, but see how far an immigrant just speaking their own language, even if that's as common in the US as Spanish, or some Native American or Cajun or whatever person not well versed in English, and see how far they go. Hell, even blacks from poor backgrounds, who do speak english, and for all the lip service to equality and opportunities, have to be deprogrammed to speak whiter english, and they undergo just that in university, if they want to work in any position from PR and finance sector, to law, public sector, the news, and so on. It's not about racism, even, it's more about classism: a redneck speaking like one would in rural country, with the dictionary, accent, mannerisms, and everything, wouldn't go far in the East or West coast either.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#80

Post by seti0Cha »

naijaboiler wrote: post #71
seti0Cha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you have to understand racist effect of colonialism - intended or not. With western based colonial structures gaining ascendancy in late 1800s to 1960s, literacy de facto came to mean literate in western languages (or literate in native languages using western letters/alphabest). In many places, that remained the accepted definition of literacy even after the French/English/Portguese colonialists left. So it is very…

Do you really believe the racist effect of colonialism would cause this academic to not realize that his own father was producing Arabic script, which he himself is fluent in, on a regular basis? I don't doubt that a bunch of people may have been incorrectly classified as illiterate, but the personal narrative of this story makes no sense.
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