|
|
|
|
|
AFRICA.SOCIETY: LANGUAGES
|
WRITING SYTEMS
|
111. DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING SYSTEMS
Longtime, and up till today, it has been assumed, by sheer and meaningless greed, that Africa, I mean black Africa, the birthplace of humanity,
had no writing system(s) of its own, apart of Ethiopian and Egyptian systems.
It all started with signs that, in parallel to the the oral tradition, can also retain and transmit KNOWLEDGE.
Traces, Ornament-word (embellishment-words), marks, pictograms, ideograms,rebus-writing or proverbs, syllabaires, all these aspecst of writing are all found in african civilisations, wether its in berber-arabs or negro-african region and all that despite the tenacious prejudice: "Africa, a civilisation without writing systems".
All the classical stages of the evolution of writing known to the whole world are integrated into african civilisations mais not for historica reasons, with the exception of syllabaries, but by the phenomenon of convergence.
VAI
NIGER-SENEGALESE. Written by means of syllabic signs of local invention
whose origin can be trced to end 18th/begining 19th century.
Search Result |
MENDE
NIGER-SENEGALESE. Written by means of 190 simple syllabic signs invented by a "muslim" tailor. This is the only African
syllabics written from right to left.
BASSA
EBURNEO-LIBERIAN. Syllabic system invented by a "black who came from america".
MENDE and BASSA were said to have been created under the influence of the VAI writing system.
MOM, BAMOM, BAMUM
NIGER-CAMEROUNIAN. The sultan of NJOYA of the BAMOUN county of present-day Cameroon invented a writing used at
the palace and throughout the the sultanate in schools. French administration banned its used in 1916.By means of signs invented
towards 1900 by Njoma, king of Foumban, and modified since by its inventor. Initially ideographic,these signs later became phonetic
(mainly syllabic). It was extended to others speaking similar languages, the Bajams for example.
NUBA, NOUBA
Uses coptic characters in religious domains for the transcription of ancient nouba. Modern NUBA is written from Korosko to Mahas by means of signs
that are closer both to the arabic alphabet and that of ancient semitic.
TOMA
NIGER-SENEGALESE. Like VAI.
HAUSA(NIGER-CHADIAN), FULANI(SENEGALESE-GUINEAN) and KANURI(NILO-CHADIAN) are written in arabic,
which is not the case of other muslim populations. Lettered black muslims write in arabic, but with rare exceptions, don't speak it, but adopted it
as languages for learning and correspondences. It has been said that YORUBA(NIGER-CONGO) was initially written in arabic.
|
Ancient Scripts |
ZIVA
Writing Systems Alternatives |
Verisign: Language Character Sets |
African Fonts |
Ecriture |
African Language Programs |
Akan Cultural Symbols Biography |
Native People Magazine |
AMA,A Story of The Atlantic Trade |
AfricaToday |
Languages, Tribes, etc. |
Encoding the Tifinagh script |
TIFINAGH ABJAD |
Cornell University |
Ancient Scripts,PLU.edu |
Ancient Writing In Middle Africa |
Ancient Writing In Middle Africa |
Hieroglyphics |
Egyptian Arithmetics |
Ecritures Africaines |
Texts and Cultural Identities |
Encoding the Tifinagh script |
TIFINAGH ABJAD |
Computers & Writing Systems |
Wikipedia |
African Symbolism |
Numbers In Various writing systems |
Tone In African Writing System |
African Languages |
African Fonts |
BlankSlate Links |
|
|
|
AFRICA.SOCIETY
|
TRANS-NATIONAL LANGUAGES
|
| LANGUAGE |
POPULATION |
COUNTRIES & POPULATIONS Speakers of the language |
| SWAHILI |
59 million |
TANZANIA (25 million), KENYA (16 million), UGANDA (6 million), CONGO, Democratic Republic (6 million), MOZAMBIQUE (1 million), Elsewhere (5 million)
|
| HAUSA |
34 million |
NIGERIA (25 million), NIGER (5.7 million), Elsewhere (3.3 million)
|
FULANI**
also called FULA, FUFULDE, FULBE
|
19.4 million |
NIGERIA (10.7 million), GUINEA (2.9 million), MALI (1.6 million), SENEGAL (1.5 million), BURKINA-FASO (894 000), CAMEROON (778 000), NIGER (615 000), BENIN (290 000), GUINEA-BISSAU (230 000), GAMBIA (131 000)
|
|
Africaines |
|
|
|
