N'Ko script

NKo ???
Script type	Alphabet
Creator	Solomana Kante
Time period	1949?present
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	NKo , Manding languages ( Mandingo , Maninka , Bambara , Dyula )
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Nkoo (165) , ​N’Ko
Unicode
Unicode alias	NKo
Unicode range	U+07C0?U+07FF
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) . For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA . For the distinction between [ ] , / / and ⟨   ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters .

NKo (???), also spelled N'Ko , is an alphabetic script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa. ^{[1] [2]} The term NKo , which means I say in all Manding languages, is also used for the Manding literary standard written in the NKo script.

The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script , notably its direction ( right-to-left ) and the letters that are connected at the base. Unlike Arabic, it is obligatory to mark both tone and vowels . NKo tones are marked as diacritics .

History [ edit ]

Kante created NKo in response to erroneous beliefs that no indigenous African writing system existed, as well as to provide a better way to write Manding languages, which had for centuries been written predominantly in Ajami script, which was not perfectly suited to the tones unique to Mande and common to many West African languages. A widely told story among NKo proponents is that Kante was particularly challenged to create a distinct system when he, in Bouake , stumbled upon a book by a Lebanese author who dismissively equated African languages "like those of the birds, impossible to transcribe" ^[3] despite said Ajami history. ^[4] Kante devised NKo as he was in Bingerville , Cote d'Ivoire and later brought to Kante's natal region of Kankan , Guinea . ^[5]

NKo began to be used in many educational books when the script is believed to have been finalized ^[6] on April 14, 1949 (now NKo Alphabet Day); ^[7] Kante had transcribed from religious to scientific and philosophical literature, even a dictionary. ^[8] These materials were given as gifts into other Manding-speaking parts of West Africa. The script received its first specially made typewriter from Eastern Europe back when Guinea had ties with the Soviet Union in the 1950s. ^[9]

The introduction of the script led to a movement promoting literacy in NKo among Mande speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. NKo literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and it has also strengthened the Manding identity in other parts of West Africa. ^[10]

Current use [ edit ]

As of 2005, it was used mainly in Guinea and the Ivory Coast (respectively by Maninka and Dyula speakers), with an active user community in Mali (by Bambara speakers). Publications include a translation of the Quran , a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography , poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers. Though taught mostly informally through NKo literacy promotion associations, NKo has also been introduced more recently into formal education through private primary schools in Upper Guinea. ^[11] It has been classed as the most successful of the West African scripts. ^[12]

NKo literature generally uses a literary language register, termed kangbe (literally, 'clear language'), that is seen as a potential compromise dialect across Mande languages . ^[13] For example, the word for 'name' in Bamanan is t?g? and in Maninka it is t?? . NKo has only one written word for 'name', but individuals read and pronounce the word in their own language. This literary register is thus intended as a koine language blending elements of the principal Manding languages , which are mutually intelligible , but has a very strong Maninka influence.

There has also been documented use of NKo, with additional diacritics, for traditional religious publications in the Yoruba and Fon languages of Benin and southwestern Nigeria . ^[14]

Letters [ edit ]

The NKo script is written from right to left, with letters being connected to one another.

Vowels [ edit ]

?	o	u	?	i	e	a
? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎

Consonants [ edit ]

r	t	d	t??	d??	p	b
? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎
m	g?b	l	k	f	s	rr
? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎
ŋ	h		j	w	n	?
? ‎	? ‎		? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎

Tones [ edit ]

NKo uses 7 diacritical marks to denote tonality and vowel length . Together with plain vowels, NKo distinguishes four tones: high, low, ascending, and descending; and two vowel lengths: long and short. Unmarked signs designate short, descending vowels.

Non-native sounds and letters [ edit ]

NKo also provides a way of representing non-native sounds through the modification of its letters with diacritics. ^{[15] [16]} These letters are used in transliterated names and loanwords.

Two dots above a vowel, resembling a diaeresis or umlaut mark, represent a foreign vowel: u-two-dots for the French /y/ sound, or e-two-dots for the French /?/ .

Diacritics are also placed above some consonant letters to cover sounds not found in Mande, such as gb-dot for /g/; gb-line for /?/; gb-two-dots for /k?p/ ; f-dot for /v/; rr-dot for /?/ ; etc.

Numerals [ edit ]

NKo numerals use positional notation . Unlike both Western and Eastern Arabic numerals , digits decrease in significance from right to left. ^[17]

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎	? ‎

Digitization [ edit ]

With the increasing use of computers and the subsequent desire to provide universal access to information technology, the challenge arose of developing ways to use the NKo script on computers. From the 1990s onwards, there were efforts to develop fonts and even web content by adapting other software and fonts. A DOS word processor named Koma Kuda was developed by Prof. Baba Mamadi Diane from Cairo University . ^[18] However the lack of intercompatibility inherent in such solutions was a block to further development.

Wikipedia [ edit ]

There is also a NKo version of Wikipedia in existence since 26 November 2019, it contains 1,503 articles, with 11,608 edits and 4,285 users. ^[19]

Unicode [ edit ]

The NKo script was added to the Unicode Standard in July 2006 with the release of version 5.0. Additional characters were added in 2018.

UNESCO 's Programme Initiative B@bel supported preparing a proposal to encode NKo in Unicode . In 2004, the proposal, presented by three professors of NKo (Baba Mamadi Diane, Mamady Doumbouya, and Karamo Kaba Jammeh) working with Michael Everson , was approved for balloting by the ISO working group WG2. In 2006, NKo was approved for Unicode 5.0. The Unicode block for NKo is U+07C0?U+07FF:

References [ edit ]

General sources [ edit ]

• Conde, Ibrahima Sory 2 (2008-09-17). "Soulemana Kante entre Linguistique et Grammaire : Le cas de la langue litteraire utilisee dans les textes en N'Ko" [Solomana Kante between Linguistics and Grammar: The case of the literary language used in texts in N'Ko] (PDF) (in French). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-20. {{ cite web }} : CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link )
• Conrad, David C. (2001). "Reconstructing Oral Tradition: Souleymane Kante's Approach to Writing Mande History". Mande Studies . 3 : 147?200.
• Dalby, David (1969). "Further indigenous scripts of West Africa: Mandin , Wolof and Fula alphabets and Yoruba 'Holy' writing". African Language Studies . 10 : 161?181.
• Davydov, Artem. "On Souleymane Kante's 'Nko Grammar' " (PDF) . Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
• Donaldson, Coleman (2017), Clear Language: Script, Register and the N'ko Movement of Mande-Speaking West Africa. , Doctoral Dissertation, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
• Donaldson, Coleman (2019). "Linguistic and Civic Refinement in the N'ko Movement of Manding-Speaking West Africa". Signs and Society . 7 (2): 156?185. doi : 10.1086/702554 . S2CID   181625415 .
• Donaldson, Coleman (2017). "Orthography, Standardization and Register: The Case of Mande". In Pia Lane; James Costa; Haley De Korne (eds.). Standardizing Minority Languages: Competing Ideologies of Authority and Authenticity in the Global Periphery . Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 175?199.
• Donaldson, Coleman (2020). "The Role of Islam, Ajami writings, and educational reform in Sulemaana Kante's N'ko" . African Studies Review . 63 (3): 462?486. doi : 10.1017/asr.2019.59 .
• Everson, Michael ; Mamady Doumbouya; Baba Mamadi Diane; Karamo Jammeh (2004). "Proposal to add the N'Ko script to the BMP of the UCS" (PDF) .
• Oyler, Dianne White (1994). Mande identity through literacy, the N'ko writing system as an agent of cultural nationalism . Toronto: African Studies Association.
• Oyler, Dianne (1995), For "All Those Who Say N'ko": N'ko Literacy and Mande Cultural Nationalism in the Republic of Guinea , Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Florida
• Oyler, Dianne White (1997). "The N'ko Alphabet as a Vehicle of Indigenist Historiography" . History in Africa . 24 : 239?256. doi : 10.2307/3172028 . JSTOR   3172028 .
• Rovenchak, Andrij (2015). Arjuna Tuzzi; Martina Bene?ova; Jan Macutek (eds.). "Quantitative Studies in the Corpus of Nko Periodicals". Recent Contributions to Quantitative Linguistics . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter: 125?138.
• Singler, John Victor (1996). "Scripts of West Africa". In Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (eds.). The World's Writing Systems . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. pp. 593?598.
• Vydrine, Valentin F (2001). "Souleymane Kante, un philosophe-innovateur traditionnaliste maninka vu a travers ses ecrits en nko" [Solomana Kante, a Maninka traditionalist philosopher-innovator seen through his writings in N'Ko]. Mande Studies (in French). 3 : 99?131.
• Wyrod, Christopher (2003), The light on the horizon: N'Ko literacy and formal schooling in Guinea , MA thesis, George Washington University
• Wyrod, Christopher (2008). "A social orthography of identity: the N'Ko literacy movement in West Africa". International Journal of the Sociology of Language . 192 : 27?44.
• "B@bel and Script Encoding Initiative Supporting Linguistic Diversity in Cyberspace" . UNESCO . 2004-12-11.
• "Bambara" . Encyclopedia Britannica . 2000. The Bambara, like other West African peoples, use the distinctive N'ko alphabet, which reads from right to left.
• "N'Ko Alphabet" . N'Ko Institute of America . Retrieved 2023-04-10 .

External links [ edit ]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to N'Ko script .

N’Ko edition of Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia

• Kanjamadi
• Observations on the use of N'ko
• Omniglot page on N'ko , with more links
• Nkohome , N'ko tutorial site with information on N'ko publications and contacts
• Virtual N'Ko keyboard by KeymanWeb
• How to write the N'ko alphabet (???) of West Africa: A tutorial! , tutorial video on writing basic letters from:
• An Ka Taa : "Learn Manding ?commonly referred to as Bambara, Dioula, Malinke or Mandingo!"
• Information about Manding languages
• An introduction to N'Ko
• "Casablanca Statement" (on localization of ICT) translated & written in N'Ko
• PanAfriL10n page on N'Ko
• Translation of the Meaning of the Holy Quran in N'ko
• Everyone Speaks Text Message (Tina Rosenberg, The New York Times Magazine , Dec. 11, 2011)