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Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system
- VeninVidiaVicii 4y agoIn 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.
- rpastuszak 4y agoInteresting, 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?).
- samus 4y agoI 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.
- rpastuszak 4y agoYeah, 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.
- samus 4y agoThe Arabic script has vowel letters, but they are used for long vowels only when writing the Arabic language. However, it is not strictly necessary to use the Arabic script that way. Several other languages use it like an alphabet and employ the vowel letters as such.
- scythe 4y agoOttoman 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, too.
- wara23arish 4y agoLebanese were printing in 1610 in both Arabic and Syriac. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Lebanon#Press https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Lebanon#Press The link actually says its the first publication in the middle east.
- scythe 4y agoOne 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_press#Ottoman_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_p... Even in Lebanon the presses were introduced by Maronites; the Islamic authorities were apparently not fans of the technology. You will also notice the presses in Safed from 1577; it's likely that your 1610 example is referring to the first book, specifically. (EDIT: it seems that this 1610 example was also operated by Christians. Perhaps I should have said "Muslims [the majority] were banned from the press.") Just for comparison, the first newspaper in Mexico started in 1539 (Mexico City), and the first in India in 1556 (Goa). The first book in the Ottoman Empire was printed in Constantinople in 1493. The Ottomans, then the largest empire in the world (until the Spanish conquest of Mexico), absolutely could have adopted printing a century before your date if they had just... wanted to. The list gives 1706 for the first continuously operated Arabic press in the Ottoman Empire at Aleppo.
- wara23arish 4y ago
- trabant00 4y agoIn the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script 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.
- josh_fyi 4y agoIndeed, 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.
- aga98mtl 4y agoAs far as we know, Senegal was never an arab colony or under direct control. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Senegal#Kingdoms_and_Empires 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.
- RansomStark 4y agoBut 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_ibn_Umar [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades
- coliveira 4y agoColonization is not the only way to spread a script. Arabic arrived in Africa by several means, not like European colonization.
- coldcode 4y agoI wonder how you can tell the underlying language when you have multiple languages sharing the same script?
- lukeschlather 4y agoIt'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.
- BurningFrog 4y agoSo the same way you tell written French from German today.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- etothepii 4y agoSurely the lack of a ß gives it away.
- 082349872349872 4y agoGoing solely on lack of a ß would characterise swiss german as french.
- darknoon 4y agoHaving spent a few months in Senegal, basically if it's on a sign it's probably Wolof, if it's in a Koran or religious school it might be Arabic (though many people can only read the Koran phonetically, they don't understand the language).
- gpvos 4y agoI guess the same way as when using the Latin script (which is the script you and I are writing in).
- idoubtit 4y agoThe 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/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts (The French Wikipedia mentions "Ajami" for these manuscript, the English page only mentions "Arabic and local languages"). And there have been research publications about Adjami texts for many decades. > we’ve been told that these people are illiterate, [...] > their authors were code-switching throughout the text: writing in strict Arabic and in its modified Ajami form. The article claims the colonial system ignored the local writing system, so it thought that people were illiterate. But Arabic was well-known, and nobody would have tagged "illiterate" on someone that could write Arabic texts. > [The Mouride] were communicating messages that the French could not understand. I don't think the colonial authorities were stupid to the point of not realizing that a text written with an Arabic alphabet was not a text. I think anyone seeing this would have thought of Arabic. And anyway it's obviously a text, and the authorities would have found someone to translate it: there were scores of people who worked for the authorities. Overall, this article could have been a nice and informative story, but it's half PR bullshit, so I had to suppose anything int it was a lie until cross-checked.
- lukeschlather 4y ago> But Arabic was well-known, and nobody would have tagged "illiterate" on someone that could write Arabic texts. The article asserts that there are still considerable groups of people carrying on commerce in Ajami, and that the official governments in those regions don't recognize Ajami as existing as a script. Are you saying this is a lie, and that people who read and write Ajami are largely considered literate by their governments? Or are you saying that this is a lie and Ajami isn't actually used in any significant way these days?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> groups of people carrying on commerce in Ajami, and that the official governments in those regions don't recognize Ajami as existing as a script Not recognised as an official language is far from not being recognised as a script.
- schnable 4y agoI 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!
- coliveira 4y agoIt 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.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoIt 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_harmonis%C3%A9s https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caract%C3%A8res_coraniques_har...
- Terretta 4y agoThis narrative is how you get new grant money.
- hirako2000 4y agoⴰⵣⵓⵍ, There is no african writing system. Even less so using this alphabet. It would be as ridiculous as claiming the discovery of some unknown Eurasian writing system, dated some 12 centuries ago. Multiple writing systems were used throughout Africa, some likely totally native to the region , and some being the result of influences of one or many writing system coming from elsewhere. In north Africa alone, Latin, Arabic, and before that some variant of phoenician was commonly used. All three even still used to this day. All used before, during and after the most recent colonies. Those of the French and the British who may have generalised the observations that people didn't seem literate when they got there. Authorities probably thought it would make a good narrative and justify their presence: bringing civilisation to inferior races. It isn't from me, that's exactly what some key figure of the "enlightment" period was claiming. Some moral obligation to colonise. Certainly convenient for some who figured natural resources over there could be quite useful to boost their ambition. Or desires for comfort provided by cheap labour. African regions had numerous writing systems. To find African history, you would get better luck studying oral traditions. If writing systems is your funded research, start with what others had already figured out. It's appalling "research" has fallen that low, this thing was actually funded and the result even published on some .edu domain.
- causality0 4y agoNgom, 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.
- originalvichy 4y agoYou could be overestimating how much writing an average citizen of an African developing country performed during the 80s and 90s based on experience in your own life in the place and time you grew up in. Or it could be sensationalized.
- MikeBattaglia 4y agoThis 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.
- Terretta 4y agosimpler explanation: a supposedly new thing to study gets grant money not discounting your context, just grant seeking explains the article framing
- apteroti 4y agoThere are some misleading points in the article. First of all, Ajam doesn't mean foreigner. It means "Mute". The story goes back to when Arabs invaded Persian Empire in the 7th century. Iranians (Persians) called the Arabic language "Tazi", which means dog barking (since a simple conversation in the Arabic language sounded like a dog barking to them). Arabs, in retaliation, called Persians Mute since they couldn't pronounce Arabic sounds. Since then, to this day, Iranians still mention Arabic texts and language as Tazi, although Arabs already gave up calling them Mute (Ajam)! The second point is about "Islamic evangelists" spreading the religion. The writer forgot that the Islamic evangelists were also actively burning books and scrolls all over their newly invaded territory because all books were apparently useless except one book! (You know which book I'm talking about, I don't want to lose my head, I'm not name-dropping). As a result, in almost all Muslim countries (except Iran and Afghanistan), the written languages were lost forever and replaced by Tazi. So, whose fault was it? Who made hundreds of local written languages vanish? Local people themselves since they didn't bother to fight back against Arabic culture? Arabs since they shoved their holy book and unholy culture in every corner of local cultures? Europian who knew about all of this, but they lied and hid it to have their own exploitation plans? Or all of the options?
- Cyph0n 4y ago> Islamic evangelists were also actively burning books and scrolls all over their newly invaded territory because all books were apparently useless except one book! Can you share a source for this claim?
- apteroti 4y agoHere's the reference, from the book itself: Nahl, 89: And We have sent down to you the Book as clarification for all things and as guidance and mercy and good tidings for the Muslims. And here they went, they set fire on Big libraries of Egypt and Iran, thousands of years of knowledge went to drain simply becasue the book has knowledge about everything!
- Cyph0n 4y ago
- anthk 4y agoThat's reminds me on the Basque language and the writting made on a Iberian-based syllabary.
- maxamillion2020 4y agoamharic isn't western african.