7 ms·

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 arti

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/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.
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    Not recognizing that there are substantial populations that read and write it is different from not recognizing it as an official language.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > not recognizing that there are substantial populations that read and write Who isn’t recognising it? This article is a story of personal discovery, not actual discovery. That’s why it’s a narrative press release. Not a paper.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nemo44x 4y ago
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. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. Anyone who feels better or worse about themselves because of this is weird.
- parasti 4y ago
  Is it weird or is it just human nature?
  - ninkendo 4y ago
    Both. Human nature can be weird.
- icegreentea2 4y ago
  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 socio-politically palatable would be more generally successful.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    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.
- jackmott 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jfk13 4y ago
Yeah, I looked at the article expecting to find out about some writing system I hadn't previously known. Oh, it's Ajami? That's hardly news, it's been widely known (at least among people with an interest in such things) for a long time. E.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script page is far from new. It may well be that they're now unearthing (or paying attention to) specific Ajami documents that have been largely ignored. But the writing system itself isn't that obscure.
- wikithrowwayy 4y ago
  To be fair, the article claims that the guy first started working in this area in 2004, which is before the wikipedia article was created. bu.edu isn't trying to say that this is a new discovery this year/decade, it's discussing a particular academic's career. That said, I'm 100% sure that the article is distorting (perhaps radically so) the background here -- these sorts of publications always seem to.
- originalvichy 4y ago
  You are seemingly misinterpreting the article and even your Wikipedia link is speaking against you. The person being interviewed in the article started his work between 1996 and 2004, and most source/reference links in the Wikipedia page are from sources after this. Read the article again.
seti0Cha 4y ago
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, not know about it? And how did he recognize that the script was written in his father's hand when he believed his father was illiterate? I really dislike this kind of info-drama.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  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.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  It's especially strange that it mentions poetry and advertisements being written in the script.
- naijaboiler 4y ago
  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.
peanutcrisis 4y ago
[flagged]
- Isamu 4y ago
  Come on, I didn’t downvote you but it is a lazy reaction to just repeat a tired label as if it explains something. All writing for the public tries to spice things up to engage the reader, some take it too far. We could talk all day about anti- woke hyperbole.
- zokula 4y ago
  [dead]
peter_retief 4y ago
The story felt improbable to me as well, so what if some people used Arabic text for making notes, not that unusual.
starkd 4y ago
> 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?
jccalhoun 4y ago
Searching google books for Ajami and Wolfofal brings up a few things from the 20th century but it is hard to tell if they are referring to the writing or it is a name or google's OCR. Most of the hits for Wolfofal writing seems to be from the 21st century https://www.google.com/search?q=Wolofal+writing&sxsrf=ALiCzsaAKI2UZm79C9S1BfB7ieUnk6ad4A:1672693489316&source=lnms&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLsv7p5Kn8AhV5MzQIHdpDAg0Q_AUoAXoECAEQCw&biw=1376&bih=692&dpr=1.4 https://www.google.com/search?q=Wolofal+writing&sxsrf=ALiCzs...

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.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  Not recognizing that there are substantial populations that read and write it is different from not recognizing it as an official language.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > not recognizing that there are substantial populations that read and write Who isn’t recognising it? This article is a story of personal discovery, not actual discovery. That’s why it’s a narrative press release. Not a paper.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nemo44x 4y ago

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. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. Anyone who feels better or worse about themselves because of this is weird.

parasti 4y ago
Is it weird or is it just human nature?
- ninkendo 4y ago
  Both. Human nature can be weird.
icegreentea2 4y ago
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 socio-politically palatable would be more generally successful.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  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.
jackmott 4y ago
[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jfk13 4y ago

Yeah, I looked at the article expecting to find out about some writing system I hadn't previously known. Oh, it's Ajami? That's hardly news, it's been widely known (at least among people with an interest in such things) for a long time. E.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script page is far from new. It may well be that they're now unearthing (or paying attention to) specific Ajami documents that have been largely ignored. But the writing system itself isn't that obscure.

wikithrowwayy 4y ago
To be fair, the article claims that the guy first started working in this area in 2004, which is before the wikipedia article was created. bu.edu isn't trying to say that this is a new discovery this year/decade, it's discussing a particular academic's career. That said, I'm 100% sure that the article is distorting (perhaps radically so) the background here -- these sorts of publications always seem to.
originalvichy 4y ago
You are seemingly misinterpreting the article and even your Wikipedia link is speaking against you. The person being interviewed in the article started his work between 1996 and 2004, and most source/reference links in the Wikipedia page are from sources after this. Read the article again.

seti0Cha 4y ago

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, not know about it? And how did he recognize that the script was written in his father's hand when he believed his father was illiterate? I really dislike this kind of info-drama.

Kaibeezy 4y ago
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.
ch4s3 4y ago
It's especially strange that it mentions poetry and advertisements being written in the script.
naijaboiler 4y ago
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.

peanutcrisis 4y ago

[flagged]

Isamu 4y ago
Come on, I didn’t downvote you but it is a lazy reaction to just repeat a tired label as if it explains something. All writing for the public tries to spice things up to engage the reader, some take it too far. We could talk all day about anti- woke hyperbole.
zokula 4y ago
[dead]

peter_retief 4y ago

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

starkd 4y ago

> 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?

jccalhoun 4y ago

Searching google books for Ajami and Wolfofal brings up a few things from the 20th century but it is hard to tell if they are referring to the writing or it is a name or google's OCR. Most of the hits for Wolfofal writing seems to be from the 21st century https://www.google.com/search?q=Wolofal+writing&sxsrf=ALiCzsaAKI2UZm79C9S1BfB7ieUnk6ad4A:1672693489316&source=lnms&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLsv7p5Kn8AhV5MzQIHdpDAg0Q_AUoAXoECAEQCw&biw=1376&bih=692&dpr=1.4 https://www.google.com/search?q=Wolofal+writing&sxsrf=ALiCzs...