African Alphabets

Africa was the source of one of the earliest types of writing (Egyptian hieroglyphics), and still retains a great variety of alphabets, including Ethiopic (a descendent of South Semitic), Tifinagh (a descendent of Phoenician used by the Tuaregs of Niger and Mali), some newly created alphabets, and many adaptations of Roman.

Tuareg

It takes about three months for the Tuareg to cross the vast expanse of the Sahara (half the size of the United States). They transport gold, salt, ivory, and books to and from centers such as Timbuktu. Known as the veiled men of the desert, Tuareg men, not the women, veil their faces, considering it indecent to expose their mouths--even while eating.

In 814 B.C., Elissa-Dido, perhaps a grandniece of the Biblical Jezebel, founded Carthage, the western capital of the Phoenicians. The Phoenician alphabet they used was called Punic.

In the second century B.C., the Semitic-Berber people of North Africa, called Numidians, built a mighty empire that transcended Carthage. They apparently adopted the Punic alphabet, adding some of their traditional symbols as letters.

The modern Tuaregs are descendants of the Numidians. Camel caravanners for a thousand years, they have dominated the trade routes of the Sahara. Tuaregs of Niger and Mali still use a Punic alphabet they call Tifinagh, meaning characters. They prefer it to the Arabic or the Roman alphabets.

Vai

The Vai writing system of Liberia was the first of several recently invented by native speakers to protect and promote their own cultures.

It was Mamolu Duwalu Bukele who either invented the Vai script or transformed an ancient picto-ideographic system into a phonetic syllabary. In either case, it is a remarkable creation. He may have gotten the idea of a syllabary from a half-Cherokee, half-African man who settled in Vai country around the time the Cherokee alphabet was invented in 1821.

Progressively simplified, the present set of 212 symbols continues to be widely used in spite of the presence of the simpler Roman alphabet. Vai is used for correspondence, to codify edicts, to record traditional tales, to keep accounts, and for translations of the Bible.

A syllabary is a writing system in which each letter represents a whole syllable. The Vai syllabary has been progressively simplified. The last vestiges of ideographs have been dropped.

Bamun

Inspired by a dream, King Njoya of Cameroon asked his people to draw different objects and name them. With these he invented a script that was picto-ideographic using a symbol for each word. From there, during King Njoya's lifetime, it progressed into a phonetic script.

Njoya used the rebus method of picturing a word for another that sounds the same, like a nose for the word knows. This led to using symbols for their sounds as well as for their pictured meanings.

The king set up schools, or "book houses," where hundreds learned to read and write. Considerable literature was produced: official documents, histories, correspondence, and Bible translation. After Njoya's death in 1933, the syllabary gradually fell into disuse.

As the script became a phonetic syllabary through successive revisions, the number of symbols was reduced from 466 in 1897 to 72 in 1918, and their forms became simpler. Njoya's phonetic achievements are praised, particularly his inclusion of a symbol for glottal-stop.