I just read this: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing...
And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any African language.)
Hraban
On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
I just read this: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing...
And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any African language.)
Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script http://www.currah.download/pages/ajamisenegal/index.html#police
so when there are proper fonts, as:
https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/ https://software.sil.org/harmattan/
it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. I get the impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used getting the way the languages sounds on paper so vowels matter. There is mentioning of transliteration and so that might need some specific support. Nothing tex (context) can't do bnut only users and usage can prove that.
Hans
----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
Am 01.01.23 um 10:21 schrieb Hans Hagen via ntg-context:
On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
I just read this: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing...
And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any African language.)
Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:
I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The article makes it sound like news, that might be the perspective of the US scholars or a necessary means to get funded. But the oldest sources quoted in Wikipedia are from 1971 and 1982.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script so when there are proper fonts, as: https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/ https://software.sil.org/harmattan/
I don’t dare to ask about the Husayni fonts... ;)
it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. I get the impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used getting the way the languages sounds on paper so vowels matter. There is mentioning of transliteration and so that might need some specific support. Nothing tex (context) can't do but only users and usage can prove that.
Thank you for your insights! Of course it’s a matter of use(r)s.
All the best for a happy new year! Hraban
On 1/1/2023 11:03 AM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The article makes it sound like news, that might be the perspective of the US scholars or a necessary means to get funded. But the oldest sources quoted in Wikipedia are from 1971 and 1982.
yes, kind of asking for funding to research if the earth is flat .. we can expect more such articles when these ai-chat-bots starts combine more old stuff into presented as new stuff
Hans
----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
Le 1/01/2023 à 11:03, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context a écrit :
Am 01.01.23 um 10:21 schrieb Hans Hagen via ntg-context:
On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
I just read this: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing...
And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any African language.)
Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:
I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The article makes it sound like news, that might be the perspective of the US scholars or a necessary means to get funded. But the oldest sources quoted in Wikipedia are from 1971 and 1982.
The arabic alphabet was also used from the XIth century to write swahili and some bantu languages around Tanzania and Kenya (Mozambic, Malawi, Uganda, east of Kongo, Sudan).
There are articles in Wikipedia.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_arabe_swahili https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language#Orthography
also: https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/swahili/%C2%A0 see "writing" https://omniglot.com/writing/swahili.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script so when there are proper fonts, as: https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/ https://software.sil.org/harmattan/
I don’t dare to ask about the Husayni fonts... ;)
it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. I get the impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used getting the way the languages sounds on paper so vowels matter. There is mentioning of transliteration and so that might need some specific support. Nothing tex (context) can't do but only users and usage can prove that.
Thank you for your insights! Of course it’s a matter of use(r)s.
All the best for a happy new year! Hraban
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
It's a bit confusing because the word ʿajamī simply means anything written in a non-Arabic language with Arabic script. Africa is certainly not the only place where that term has been used. It is also the case that Arabic script has been used to write West African languages for very many centuries. There is no way that guy can have grown up there and not know that so I don't understand what this article is up to. Possibly this is a separate adaptation using its own conventions for writing the local language. Probably just pop-sci sensationalism coupled with some rather severe mis-/non-understanding on the part of the article author.
Den sön 1 jan. 2023 14:30Alain Delmotte via ntg-context ntg-context@ntg.nl skrev:
Le 1/01/2023 à 11:03, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context a écrit :
Am 01.01.23 um 10:21 schrieb Hans Hagen via ntg-context:
On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
I just read this:
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing...
And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any African language.)
Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:
I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The article makes it sound like news, that might be the perspective of the US scholars or a necessary means to get funded. But the oldest sources quoted in Wikipedia are from 1971 and 1982.
The arabic alphabet was also used from the XIth century to write swahili and some bantu languages around Tanzania and Kenya (Mozambic, Malawi, Uganda, east of Kongo, Sudan).
There are articles in Wikipedia.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_arabe_swahili https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language#Orthography
also: https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/swahili/ see "writing" https://omniglot.com/writing/swahili.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script so when there are proper fonts, as: https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/ https://software.sil.org/harmattan/
I don’t dare to ask about the Husayni fonts... ;)
it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. I get the impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used getting the way the languages sounds on paper so vowels matter. There is mentioning of transliteration and so that might need some specific support. Nothing tex (context) can't do but only users and usage can prove that.
Thank you for your insights! Of course it’s a matter of use(r)s.
All the best for a happy new year! Hraban
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net
On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 2:14 PM BPJ via ntg-context ntg-context@ntg.nl wrote:
It's a bit confusing because the word ʿajamī simply means anything written
in a non-Arabic language with Arabic script. Africa is certainly not the only place where that term has been used. It is also the case that Arabic script has been used to write West African languages for very many centuries. There is no way that guy can have grown up there and not know that so I don't understand what this article is up to. Possibly this is a separate adaptation using its own conventions for writing the local language. Probably just pop-sci sensationalism coupled with some rather severe mis-/non-understanding on the part of the article author.
I grew up in Northern New Mexico and now live in Canada, so know that "educational" efforts which suppressed non-European languages and writing systems were too often imposed on indigenous peoples in N. America. It would not surprise me to learn that some West African kids were never exposed to "anything written in a non-Arabic language with Arabic script".
-
Alain Delmotte -
BPJ -
George N. White III -
Hans Hagen -
Henning Hraban Ramm