Re: Swahili & Banthu

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Mon Oct 20 2003 - 03:43:20 CST


From: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>
> Peter Kirk wrote:
> > Are we talking about a real non-Latin script, some kind of
> > syllabary or logographic script, for Swahili and other
> > Bantu languages? [...]
> > Or did someone not notice that Marco's comments were about
> > the word "joke"?
>
> Indeed.
>
> In the last few months, I have been relatively serious, so someone may not
> know or remember that I am the unofficial Unicode List's clown.

Accept my apologize: I had not checked the script used by Swahili when it
was discussed (joked). However after reading your message, I had thought
that this language was mostly transliterated to ASCII, and there may have
existed some historic native scripts to write this language, in a context
where culture is/was mostly transmitted orally.

As Africa has been influenced by many foreign invasions, there may in fact
exist other scripts to represent this language (notably some Semitic
script). Do you know if such historic texts exist for this language written
in Arabic, Ethiopic, or some Indic scripts imported by merchants or
missionnaries ?



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