Writing systems of Africa - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The writing systems of Africa refer to the current and historical practice of writing systems on the African continent

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, both indigenous and those introduced.

Today, the Latin script is commonly encountered across Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

. Arabic script is dominant in North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

and Ge'ez/Ethiopic

Ge'ez alphabet

Ge'ez , also called Ethiopic, is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea but originated in an abjad used to write Ge'ez, now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Church...

in the Horn of Africa

Horn of Africa

The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...

. Regionally and in some localities, other scripts may be of significant importance.

The importance of oral culture and tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

in Africa and the recent dominance of European languages through colonialism

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

, among other factors, has led to the misconception that the languages of Africa

Languages of Africa

There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...

as a whole either have no written forms, or have been put to writing only very recently.

Symbols and ideograms

As in the cultures of other regions, the use of meaningful symbols in Africa is well established. Some of these have or have had particular customary uses. Nsibidi

Nsibidi

Nsibidi is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently ideographic, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements...

in what is now southern Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

is one example.

The Nsibidi set of symbols is independent of Roman, Latin or Arabic influence and a completely indigenous creation of these peoples. Today, not much is known about Nsibidi because it was used almost exclusively by the now, largely extinct secret societies that regulated social activities in the community. Only members initiated into the secret society knew the symbols, which were mainly used for ritual and ceremonial purposes.

This presents a serious challenge to contemporary research as secret societies in Nigeria were almost completely wiped out as a result of colonization. Upon attainment of independence, successive Nigerian governments held negative views about secret societies, seeing these as a threat to its own legitimacy, hence, unsurprisingly, there has been continued and largely successful efforts to repress such organizations.

Ancient Egyptian and Meroitic

Perhaps the most famous writing system of the African continent is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

. These developed later into forms known as Hieratic

Hieratic

Hieratic refers to a cursive writing system that was used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related...

and Demotic

Demotic (Egyptian)

Demotic refers to either the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Delta, or the stage of the Egyptian language following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and...

. Still later in ancient history, this system was adapted to the Meroitic script

Meroitic script

The Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. It was developed in the Napatan Period , and first appears in the 2nd century BCE. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian...

in the upper Nile valley.

Tifinagh

The Tifinagh

Tifinagh

Tifinagh is a series of abjad and alphabetic scripts used by some Berber peoples, notably the Tuareg, to write their language.A modern derivate of the traditional script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century...

alphabet is still actively used to varying degrees in traditional and modernized forms for writing of Berber languages

Berber languages

The Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert...

(Tamazight, Tamashek, etc.) of the Maghreb

Maghreb

The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...

, Sahara

Sahara

The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...

, and Sahel

Sahel

The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian Savannas in the south.It stretches across the North African continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea....

regions (Savage 2008).

Neo-Tifinagh is encoded in the Unicode range U+2D30 to U+2D7F, starting from version 4.1.0. There are 55 defined characters, but there are more characters being used than those defined. In ISO 15924, the code Tfng is assigned to Neo-Tifinagh.

Ge'ez

The Ge'ez script

Ge'ez alphabet

is an abugida

Abugida

An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...

that was developed in the Horn of Africa

Horn of Africa

for writing the Ge'ez language

Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...

. The script is used today in Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

and Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

for Amharic

Amharic language

Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working...

, Tigrinya

Tigrinya language

Tigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrnia, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two main languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia , where it...

, Tigre

Tigre language

For other uses please see Tigre Tigre is a Semitic language, which, along with Tigrinya, is believed to be one of direct descendants of the extinct Ge'ez language...

, and several other languages. It sometimes called Ethiopic, and is known in Ethiopia as the fidel or abugida (the actual origin of the 21st century linguistic term "abugida", which apply to scripts of India).

Ge'ez or Ethiopic has been computerized and assigned Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

3.0 codepoints between U+1200 and U+137F (decimal 4608–4991), containing the basic syllable signs for Ge'ez

Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...

, Amharic

Amharic language

, and Tigrinya

Tigrinya language

, punctuation and numerals.

Osmanya

Osmanya is a writing script

Writing system

A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...

for the Somali language

Somali language

The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....

invented in the early 20th century by the Sultan of Hobyo

Sultanate of Hobyo

The Sultanate of Hobyo was a 19th century Somali ruling house in present-day northern Somalia. It was carved out of the former Majeerteen Sultanate by Yusuf Ali Kenadid, cousin of the Majeerteen Sultanate's ruler, Boqor Osman Mahamuud....

's brother, Osman Yuusuf Keenadiid of the Majeerteen

Majeerteen

The Majeerteen is a Somali clan. Its members form a part of the Harti confederation of Darod sub-clans, and primarily inhabit the Puntland region in northeastern Somalia....

clan. Though no longer the official writing script in Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, Osmanya has experienced a resurgence of interest in recent years, as young Somalis have lobbied to reinstate it as the country's national writing script.

The Osmanya script is available in the Unicode range 10480-104AF [from U+10480 - U+104AF (66688–66735)].

Other indigenous writing systems

In the last two centuries, a large variety of writing systems have been created in Africa (Dalby 1967, 1968, 1969). Some are still in use today, while others have been largely displaced by non-African writing such as the Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

and the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

.

The Vai syllabary

Syllabary

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...

was invented by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ for writing the Vai language

Vai language

The Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone. It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin...

in what is now Liberia

Liberia

Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...

during the early 19th century. It is still used.

The Bamum (Bamun; also Shumom) system of pictographic writing was invented beginning in the late 19th-century by Sultan Njoya Ibrahim for writing the Bamun language in what is now Cameroon

Cameroon

Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...

. It is rarely used today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists.

The Mende

Mende language

Mende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone....

Ki-ka-ku or KiKaKui syllabary

Syllabary

was invented by Kisimi Kamara

Kisimi Kamara

Kisimi Kamara was a simple village tailor from Sierra Leone who gave his people the gift of writing. He invented the Mende syllabary in 1921.-Early life:...

in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...

in the early 20th century. It is still used.

N'Ko

N'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages....

was invented in 1949 by Solomana Kante

Solomana Kante

Soulemayne Kante or Solomana Kante was an African writer and inventor of the N'Ko alphabet for the Mande languages of West Africa...

in Guinea

Guinea

Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...

, primarily for the Manding languages

Manding languages

The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...

. It is apparently in increasing use in West Africa

West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...

, including some efforts to adapt it to other languages (Wyrod 2008).

Mandombe

Mandombe

The word 'Mandombe' in the Mandombe script.Mandombe or Mandombé, is a revealed script invented in 1978 by Wabeladio Payi in Mbanza-Ngungu in the Bas-Congo province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after speaking with Simon Kimbangu, the prophet of the Kimbanguist Church, in a dream...

was invented by Wabeladio Payi in 1978 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

. It is apparently promoted by the Kimbanguist Church and used for writing Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

, and other languages.

Zaghawa (Beria)

Zaghawa alphabet

The Zaghawa or Beria alphabet, Beria Giray Erfe , is an indigenous alphabetic script proposed for the Zaghawa Beria language of Darfur and Chad....

was created in 2000 from an earlier proposal made from livestock brands.

There was also a traditional script used by the Bagam (Tuchscherer

Konrad Tuchscherer

Konrad Tuchscherer is an educator, scholar, writer, and public intellectual. Tuchscherer currently serves as the Co-Director of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in Cameroon and is Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at St...

1999, Rovenchak 2009).

Introduced and adapted writing systems

Most written scripts, including Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, were based on previous written scripts. Many indigenous African scripts were similarly developed from previous scripts.

Phoenician/Punic

The Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon traded with North Africans and founded cities there, the most famous being Carthage

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

. The Phoenician alphabet

Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...

is thought to be the origin of many others, including: Arabic, Greek, and Latin. The Carthaginian dialect is called Punic. Today's Tifinagh

Tifinagh

is thought by some scholars to be descended from Punic, but this is still under debate.

Greek

The Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

was adapted in Egypt to the Coptic alphabet

Coptic alphabet

The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...

and language

Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...

(which is today only a liturgical language). The latter alphabet was in turn adapted to what is now called the Old Nubian alphabet, with the addition of a few letters derived from ancient Meroitic

Meroitic script

Arabic

The Arabic script was introduced into Africa by the spread of Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

and by trade. Apart from its obvious use for the Arabic language

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, it has been adapted for a number of other languages over the centuries. The Arabic script is still used in some of these cases, but not in others.

It was often necessary to modify the script to accommodate sounds not represented in the script as used for the Arabic language. The adapted form of the script is also called Ajami

Ajami script

The term Ajami , or Ajamiyya , which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign" or "stranger," has been applied to Arabic alphabets used for writing African languages....

, especially in the Sahel

Sahel

, and sometimes by specific names for individual languages, such as Wolofal

Wolofal

Wolofal is a derivation of the Arabic script for writing the Wolof language. It is basically the name of a West African Ajami script as used for that language.Wolofal was the first script for writing Wolof language...

, Sorabe, and Wadaad's writing

Wadaad's writing

Wadaad's writing is the Somali language written with the Arabic script. Originally, it referred to "an ungrammatical Arabic containing some Somali words," as used by Somali religious men to write qasidas, and by merchants for business, letter writing, and to draft petitions...

. Despite the existence of a widely known and well-established script in Ethiopia, there are a few cases where Muslims in Ethiopia have used the Arabic script, instead, for reasons of religious identity.

There are no official standard forms or orthographies, though local usage follows traditional practice for the area or language. There was an effort by ISESCO to standardize Ajami usage. Some critics believe this relied too much on Perso-Arabic script

Perso-Arabic script

The Persian or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language, adding four letters: , , , and . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add other letters...

forms and not enough on existing use in Africa. In any event, the effect of that standardization effort has been limited.

Latin

The first systematic attempts to adapt the Latin script to African languages were probably those of Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

missionaries on the eve of European colonization (Pasch 2008). These however were isolated, done by people without linguistic training, and sometimes resulted in competing systems for the same or similar languages.

One of the challenges in adapting the Latin alphabet to many African languages was the use in those tongues of sounds unfamiliar to Europeans and thus without writing convention they could resort to. Various use was made of letter combinations, modifications, and diacritics do represent such sounds. Some resulting orthographies, such as the Yoruba writing system established by the late 19th century, have remained largely intact.

In many cases, the colonial regimes had little interest in the writing of African languages, but in others they did. In the case of Hausa

Hausa language

Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...

in Northern

Northern Nigeria Protectorate

Northern Nigeria was a British protectorate formed in 1900. The basis of the protectorate was the 1885 Treaty of Berlin which broadly granted Northern Nigeria to Britain, on the basis of their protectorates in Southern Nigeria...

Nigeria

, for instance, the colonial government was directly involved in determining the written forms for the language.

Since the colonial period, there have been efforts to propose and promulgate standardized or at least harmonized approaches to using the Latin script for African languages. Examples include the Standard Alphabet by Lepsius

Standard Alphabet by Lepsius

The Standard Alphabet by Lepsius is a Latin alphabet developed by Karl Richard Lepsius to write African languages. Published 1855 and in a revised edition in 1863, it was comprehensive but it was not used much as it contains a lot of diacritic marks and therefore was difficult to read, write and...

(mid-19th century) and the Africa Alphabet

Africa Alphabet

The Africa Alphabet was developed in 1928 under the lead of Diedrich Westermann. He developed it with a group of Africanists at the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in London...

of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (1928, 1930).

Following independence there has been continued attention to the transcription of African languages. In the 1960s and 1970s, UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

facilitated several "expert meetings" on the subject, including a seminal meeting in Bamako in 1966, and one in Niamey in 1978. The latter produced the African reference alphabet

African reference alphabet

An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982...

. Various country-level standardizations have also been made or proposed, such as the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet

Pan-Nigerian alphabet

The Pan-Nigerian alphabet is a set of 33 Latin letters standardized by the National Language Centre of Nigeria in the 1980s. It is intended to be sufficient to write all the languages of Nigeria without using digraphs.-History:...

. A Berber Latin alphabet

Berber Latin alphabet

The Berber Latin alphabet is the version of the Latin alphabet used to write the Berber language...

for northern Berber

Berber languages

The Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert...

includes extended Latin characters and two Greek letters.

Such discussions continue, especially on more local scales regarding cross-border languages.

Proposed but not used writing systems

Over the years there have been other alphabets proposed for writing one or more African language that have either never been actively used or used only briefly. One example is Bakri Sapalo

Bakri Sapalo

Sheikh Bakri Sapalo was an Oromo scholar, poet and religious teacher. He is best known as the inventor of a writing system for the Oromo language.-Life:...

's Oromo

Oromo language

Oromo, also known as Afaan Oromo, Oromiffa, Afan Boran, Afan Orma, and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic family. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and...

syllabary (Hayward and Hassan 1981).

Typewriters

There is not much information on the adaptaton of typewriters to African language needs (apart from Arabic, and of course those African languages that do not use any modified Latin letters). There were apparently some typewriters fitted with keys for typing Nigeria

Nigeria

n languages. There was at least one IBM Selectric typewriter

IBM Selectric typewriter

The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on July 31, 1961.Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a traditional typewriter, the Selectric had a type element that rotated and...

"typeball" developed for some African languages (including Fula

Fula language

The Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...

).

Around 1930 the English typewriter was modified by Ayana Birru of Ethiopia to type an incomplete and ligated version of the Amharic alphabet. http://www.ethiopic.com/Ayana_Birru.htm

The 1982 proposal for a unicase

Unicase

A unicase or unicameral alphabet is one that has no case for its letters. Tamil, Arabic, Old Hungarian, Hebrew, Georgian and Hangul are unicase alphabets, while Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian have two cases for each letter, e.g., B/b, Β/β, Б/б,...

version of the African reference alphabet

African reference alphabet

An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982...

made by Michael Mann and David Dalby included a proposed typewriter adaptation.http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=IntlNiameyKybd

Early computing and fonts

With early desktop computers it was possible to modify existing 8-bit

8-bit

The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system. The Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers...

Latin fonts to accommodate specialized character needs. This was done without any kind of system or standardization, meaning incompatibility of encodings.

Similarly, there were diverse efforts (successful, but not standardized) to enable use of Ethiopic/Ge'ez

Ge'ez alphabet

on computers.

Current standards

There was never any ISO 8859 standard for any African languages apart from ISO 8859-6 for (standard) Arabic. One standard - ISO 6438

ISO 6438

ISO 6438:1983, Documentation — African coded character set for bibliographic information interchange, is an ISO standard for an 8-bit character encoding for African languages. It has had little use...

for bibliographic purposes - was adopted but apparently little used (curiously, although this was adopted at about the same time as the African reference alphabet

African reference alphabet

An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982...

, there were some differences between the two, indicating perhaps a lack of communication between efforts to harmonize transcription of African languages and the ISO standards process).

Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

in principle resolves the issue of incompatible encoding, but other questions such as the handling of diacritics in extended Latin scripts are still being raised. These in turn relate to fundamental decisions regarding orthographies of African languages.

In recent years, Osmanya, Tifinagh

Tifinagh

and N'Ko

N'Ko

have been added to Unicode, as have individual characters to other ranges, such as Latin and Arabic. Efforts to encode other African scripts, including minority scripts and major historical writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs

, are being coordinated by the Script Encoding Initiative.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.