Cameroon: Orthography and Identity

Posted by sociolingo on January 2, 2008

Source: Cogprints

Orthography and Identity in Cameroon

Bird, Steven (2001) Orthography and Identity in Cameroon. [Journal (Paginated)] (In Press)

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Abstract

The tone languages of sub-Saharan Africa raise challenging questions for the design of new writing systems. Marking too much or too little tone can have grave consequences for the usability of an orthography. Orthography development, past and present, rests on a raft of sociolinguistic issues having little to do with the technical phonological concerns that usually preoccupy orthographers. Some of these issues are familiar from the spelling reforms which have taken place in European languages. However, many of the issues faced in sub-Saharan Africa are different, being concerned with the creation of new writing systems in a multi-ethnic context: residual colonial influences, the construction of new nation-states, detribalization versus culture preservation and language reclamation, and so on. Language development projects which crucially rely on creating or revising orthographies may founder if they do not attend to the various layers of identity that are indexed by orthography: whether colonial, national, ethnic, local or individual identity. In this study, I review the history and politics of orthography in Cameroon, with a focus on tone marking. The paper concludes by calling present-day orthographers to a deeper and broader understanding of orthographic issues.

African orthography: Berber & Tifinagh

Source: Ancient Scripts

From the website:

The “Berber” script has a very interesting story behind it. Ancient Berber is thought to have sprung off the Punic script roughly around the 6th century BC. It was used throughout North Africa until the 3rd century AD. Strangely though, the inscriptions remain unread, as linguists cannot link the written language to any of the dozen modern Berber languages spoken in North Africa. However, it is widely accepted by scholars that it was a Berber language given the continuity of the population.

Ancient Berber disappeared after the 3rd century AD, first supplanted by the Roman alphabet, and then later by the Arabic alphabet brought by Islam. But by some strange miracle, it is preserved, and still used today mainly by women in Tuareg society. The modern form is called Tifinagh, which scholars believe to mean “Phoenician/Punic letters”. Tifinagh is not used widely for literature or history, but instead for recreation (like for composing letters).

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African orthography: Tifinagh script

Source: Omniglot

Tifinagh   

Origin

The Tifinagh alphabet is thought to have derived from the ancient Berber script. The name Tifinagh possibly means ‘the Phoenician letters’, or possibly from the phrase tifin negh, which means ‘our invention’.

Since September 2003, the Tifinagh alphabet children in Moroccan primary schools have been taught to write Tamazight with the Tifinagh alphabet. It is also used by the Tuareg, particularly the women, for private notes, love letters and in decoration. For public purposes, the Arabic alphabet is normally used.

Notable features

• Type of writing system: alphabet.
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.

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Senegal: Wolof orthography

Janga wolof writes about Wolof orthography in a recent article. That set me off searching for other material on Wolof orthography.

See also:

Omniglot has an orthographic table.

Academic paper: Standardization of national languages

 The following UNESCO paper (pdf doc) has several African papers which may be of interest. You will need Adobe Reader to access it. (Download it here.)

STANDARDIZATION OF NATIONAL
LANGUAGES
SYMPOSIUM
ON LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION
2-3 February 1991
edited by
Utta von Gleich and Ekkehard Wolff

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