Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:42:59 +0200
In the race between African scripts and the Latin alphabet, only Ethiopia
and Eritrea are in the game
<http://mgafrica.com/author/christine-mungai> Christine Mungai
>From 11th, Jun 2014 13:00
Ge'ez is the only original African script taught and used widely in everyday
interaction - in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is also the most successful.
Last weekend, a Kenyan made the news by announcing he had developed an
indigenous script for the Luo language. In no time, #WritingLuo was the top
trending topic in Kenya on Twitter.
The developer, Kefa Ombewa, said he was out to "de-Latinise" the Luo
language, arguing that African languages needed indigenous symbols to
express their nuances that the Roman alphabet simply cannot capture.
Reception on social media so far has largely treated the development of the
script as just another flamboyant curiosity, but could Ombewa be on to
something?
The desire to express African languages in locally developed symbols has
been strong through the decades. Written language embodies historical
identity and cultural power-thus when Israel became a state in 1948, it
revived the Hebrew language from near-oblivion, not just as a tool of
unifying modern Jews, but also as a political symbol of their claim of a
connection to ancient Israel.
Today, most African languages are written in the Latin or Arabic alphabets.
However, Latin and Arabic themselves developed from ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics. Despite the modern diversity of writing systems, historians
believe that ancient writing developed independently in only four
places-Egypt, Iran/Iraq, China, and Mesoamerica (the cultural area in the
Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala,
El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica).
Ge'ez in the mix
All other scripts are derivatives or influences of these four: For example,
Arabic is derived from ancient writing in Iran/Iraq; Japanese and Korean and
derived from Chinese, and Latin alphabet is derived from ancient Greek,
which adopted its alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Thus it could be argued that European languages today are written in script
derived from Africa-not the other way around.
Although Africa is known for its oral traditions, there have also been
several indigenous African writing systems, some of which are still in use
today.
Used in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ge'ez is the only native African script taught
in school today used widely in everyday interactions. Dating back to the 9th
century BC, Ge'ez itself is an extinct language, much like Latin, only used
in the liturgy of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches.
But the Ge'ez script is used to write Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre and most
other languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. And with a population of over 90
million residing in those two countries, Ge'ez is the most successful native
African script today.
Ge'ez probably developed over the course of several centuries. But another
native African script, Vai in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is credited to one
man, who invented the Vai writing system in the 1830s, a Liberian named
Momolu Duwalu Bukele.
It is said the script was revealed to him in a dream, though it is more
likely that the Cherokee syllabary in North America provided a model for the
design of Vai writing. At the time, many Cherokee had migrated to Liberia in
the early 1830s, just at the time when Cherokee itself was developing its
written script.
Cameroon's Bamum
Another script developed in modern times is the Bamum script, invented by
King Ibrahim Njoya, the 17th king of the Bamum of West Cameroon in 1896. The
script, also named A-ka-u-ku after its first four letters, is rarely used
today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists.
But King Njoya's grandson and current sultan of Bamum, Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya,
has since transformed his palace into a school to re-teach the Bamum script,
initiating The Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in 2005 to bring it back
from the brink of extinction.
Further south in Malawi is the Mwangwego alphabet developed in 1977 for
Malawian languages by Nolence Mwangwego. But it is not used widely in
everyday interactions. Other African scripts, such as Nubian and Meroitic,
have fallen into disuse and are considered extinct.
But most African languages today, particularly south of the Sahara, are
written using the Latin alphabet. This presents many difficulties in
expressing some sounds that are not found in European languages.
In the 1960s and 1970s, UNESCO hosted several "expert meetings" on the
subject, including a seminal meeting in Bamako in 1966, and one in Niamey in
1978, where a standard African alphabet-using Latin letters but
incorporating many other non-Latin sounds-was proposed. But it is yet to be
widely adopted.
<http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-06-11-in-the-race-between-african-scripts-
and-the-latin-alphabet-only-ethiopia-and-eritrea-are-in-the-game> Followers
of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The native African script of Ge'ez is
itself extinct, used only on the liturgy of Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox
churches. (AFP)
<http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-06-11-in-the-race-between-african-scripts-
and-the-latin-alphabet-only-ethiopia-and-eritrea-are-in-the-game> Followers
of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The native African script of Ge'ez is
itself extinct, used only on the liturgy of Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox
churches. (AFP)
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