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Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#101

Post by aatd86 »

kimi wrote: post #44
aatd86 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.

> If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide is called human history. And I have a feeling that if the victims had been more lucky as to be the winners, they would have made more or less the same things.

Well, it's not a question of "if I were the winner" , that's a pretty dumb argument (excuse my French). Reestablishing fairness would still be the same issue with simply the roles reversed.

It's a question of being humane and restablishing fairness of opportunities amongst human beings.

The status quo might be appealing but it can feed needless conflicts between people, sometimes on the sole basis of skin complexion.

I understand that burying one's head in the sand can be appealing but that still shows a lack of accountability and a reluctance to improve Humanity imho.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#102

Post by coliveira »

coldtea wrote: post #73
coliveira wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

You are overstating how much the French or even the British could do in Africa during that period. 99% of what they had was just brute force coercion.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#103

Post by RansomStark »

aga98mtl wrote: post #17
josh_fyi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as we know, Senegal was never an arab colony or under direct control. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Senegal#Kingdoms_an... Calling it an arab colony would be like saying Sweden was a roman colony because they use the roman script.

But it was conquered by Muslim invaders, not Arabs, but Muslims, specifically the Almoravids [0].

Sweden is not a particularly good example. A better example might be Latvia (or any of the other areas invaded as part of the northern crusades), which was invaded by a group of Catholics spreading the faith[1], Latvia could not be called a colony of the Papacy, but it certainly moved the area into Romes sphere of influence, with all the religion and language that entails.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_ibn_Umar

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#104

Post by wara23arish »

scythe wrote: post #90
wara23arish wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One book was printed in 1610 — a book of psalms. The article goes on to say that one of the first printing presses in the region was founded in 1734. You can find a list of the presses here, note that there is a lot more being printed in Armenian and Hebrew than in Arabic or Turkish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_p... Even in Lebanon the presses were introduced by Maronites; the Islamic a…

Yeah Maronites weren’t exactly keen on the ottoman empire and would even oppose them and wage rebellions at times throughout history.

I just felt the need to comment since I remember learning that factoid in my history class growing up and never had a chance to say it :)

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#105

Post by rpastuszak »

samus wrote: post #26
rpastuszak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ol…

I have observed that being exposed to learning to read the English alphabet as the first Latin Alphabet leads to bad habits when learning to read other Latin-based scripts later on. Even if English is not the mother tongue of the speaker. Dunno if that is the case for French as well, as it also uses the Latin alphabet in a peculiar way.

Yeah, In my experience understanding the history of the language and phonetics helps a lot with those situations. And, obv. things get easier with exposure to more languages as new patterns start to emerge.

I'd always find it funny when be English friends would point our how difficult to read Polish is, where (with one small exception most native speakers wouldn't notice) the alphabet corresponds to the pronunciation.

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