N'Ko
Encyclopedia
N'Ko is both a script
devised by Solomana Kante
in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages
of West Africa
, and the name of the literary language
itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages
.
The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script, notably its direction (right-to-left
) and the connected letters. It obligatorily marks both tone and vowels.
in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a cultureless people, since prior to this time no indigenous African writing system for his language existed. N'Ko came first into use in Kankan
, Guinea
, as a Maninka
alphabet and was disseminated from there into other Mande-speaking parts of West Africa. N'Ko Alphabet Day is April 14, relating to April 14, 1949, the date the script is believed to have been finalized.
The introduction of the alphabet led to a movement promoting literacy in the N'Ko alphabet among Mande speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Mandinka cultural identity in Guinea, and it has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa (Oyler 1994).
and Côte d'Ivoire
(respectively by Maninka
and Dioula
-speakers), with an active user community in Mali
(by Bambara
-speakers). Publications include a translation of the Qur'an
, 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. It has been classed as the most successful of the West African scripts.
The literary language used is intended as a koine
blending elements of the principal Manding languages
(which are mutually intelligible), but has a particularly strong Maninka flavour.
The Latin script with several extended characters (phonetic additions) is used for all Manding languages
to one degree or another for historical reasons and because of its adoption for "official" transcriptions of the languages by various governments. In some cases, such as with Bambara
in Mali, promotion of literacy using this orthography has led to a fair degree of literacy in it. Arabic transcription is commonly used for Mandinka
in The Gambia
and Senegal
.
word processor called Koma Kuda was developed by Prof. Baba Mamadi Diané from the University of Cairo. However the lack of intercompatibility inherent in such solutions was a block to further development.
Pango
1.18 and GNOME
2.20 have native support for the N'ko languages. An iOS app for tweeting in N'ko, TwTool, is available on the Apple app store.
Standard in July, 2006 with the release of version 5.0.
UNESCO
's Programme Initiative B@bel supported the preparation of a proposal to encode N'Ko in Unicode
. In 2004, the proposal, presented by three professors of N'Ko (Baba Mamadi Diané, Mamady Doumbouya, and Karamo Kaba Jammeh) working with Michael Everson
, was approved for balloting by the ISO working group WG2. In 2006 N'Ko was approved for Unicode 5.0.
The Unicode block for N'Ko is U+07C0–U+07FF:
. It is a literary language
based on a compromise dialect, which Mandens from different sub-groups use to talk to each other. They switch from their own dialect to a conventional dialect known as N'Ko. N'Ko is also known as Kangbe – the clear language.
For example, the word for 'name' in Bamanan is tɔgɔ and in Maninka it is toh. In written communications each person will write it as tô in N’Ko, and yet read and pronounce it differently.
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
devised by Solomana Kante
Solomana Kante
Soulemayne Kante or Solomana Kante was an African writer and inventor of the N'Ko alphabet for the Mande languages of West Africa...
in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages
Mande languages
The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé people and include Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Bissa, Dioula, Kagoro, Bozo, Mende, Susu, Yacouba, Vai, and Ligbi...
of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
, and the name of the literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages
Manding languages
The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
.
The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script, notably its direction (right-to-left
Right-to-left
A language is described as right-to-left if writing starts from the right of the page, and continues to the left. Right to left scripts are:* Arabic alphabet - used for Arabic, Persian, Urdu and many other languages....
) and the connected letters. It obligatorily marks both tone and vowels.
History
Kante created N'KoN'Ko
N'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages....
in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a cultureless people, since prior to this time no indigenous African writing system for his language existed. N'Ko came first into use in Kankan
Kankan
Kankan is the largest city in Guinea in land area, and the third largest in population at 207,790 . The city is located on the Milo River in eastern Guinea and lying about 345 miles east of Conakry....
, Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
, as a Maninka
Maninka language
Maninka, or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo languages...
alphabet and was disseminated from there into other Mande-speaking parts of West Africa. N'Ko Alphabet Day is April 14, relating to April 14, 1949, the date the script is believed to have been finalized.
The introduction of the alphabet led to a movement promoting literacy in the N'Ko alphabet among Mande speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Mandinka cultural identity in Guinea, and it has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa (Oyler 1994).
Current usage
As of 2005, it is principally used in GuineaGuinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
and Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
(respectively by Maninka
Maninka language
Maninka, or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo languages...
and Dioula
Dioula language
Jula is a Mande language spoken in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Mali. It is one of the Manding languages, and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a...
-speakers), with an active user community in Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
(by Bambara
Bambara language
Bambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan , its designation in the language itself , is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people...
-speakers). Publications include a translation of the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers. It has been classed as the most successful of the West African scripts.
The literary language used is intended as a koine
Koine language
In linguistics, a koiné language is a standard language or dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid...
blending elements of the principal Manding languages
Manding languages
The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
(which are mutually intelligible), but has a particularly strong Maninka flavour.
The Latin script with several extended characters (phonetic additions) is used for all Manding languages
Manding languages
The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
to one degree or another for historical reasons and because of its adoption for "official" transcriptions of the languages by various governments. In some cases, such as with Bambara
Bambara language
Bambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan , its designation in the language itself , is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people...
in Mali, promotion of literacy using this orthography has led to a fair degree of literacy in it. Arabic transcription is commonly used for Mandinka
Mandinka language
The Mandinka language is a Mandé language spoken by millions of Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau and Chad; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly...
in The Gambia
The Gambia
The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....
and Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
.
Letters
The N'Ko alphabet is written from right to left, with letters being connected to one another.Vowels
| ɔ | o | u | ɛ | i | e | a |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ߐ | ߏ | ߎ | ߍ | ߌ | ߋ | ߊ |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Consonants
| ra | da | cha | ja | ta | pa | ba |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ߙ | ߘ | ߗ | ߖ | ߕ | ߔ | ߓ |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| ma | la | ka | fa | gba | sa | rra |
| ߡ | ߟ | ߞ | ߝ | ߜ | ߛ | ߚ |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| n' | ya | wa | ha | na | nya | |
| ߒ | ߦ | ߥ | ߤ | ߣ | ߢ | |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
N'ko and computers
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 N'ko on computers. From the 1990s on, there were efforts to develop fonts and even web content by adapting other software and fonts. An MS-DOSMS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
word processor called Koma Kuda was developed by Prof. Baba Mamadi Diané from the University of Cairo. However the lack of intercompatibility inherent in such solutions was a block to further development.
Pango
Pango
Pango is an LGPL licensed open source computing library used by software developers for laying out and rendering text in high quality, emphasising support for multilingual text...
1.18 and GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
2.20 have native support for the N'ko languages. An iOS app for tweeting in N'ko, TwTool, is available on the Apple app store.
Unicode
N'Ko script was added to the UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Standard in July, 2006 with the release of version 5.0.
UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
's Programme Initiative B@bel supported the preparation of a proposal to encode N'Ko in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
. In 2004, the proposal, presented by three professors of N'Ko (Baba Mamadi Diané, Mamady Doumbouya, and Karamo Kaba Jammeh) working with Michael Everson
Michael Everson
Michael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
, was approved for balloting by the ISO working group WG2. In 2006 N'Ko was approved for Unicode 5.0.
The Unicode block for N'Ko is U+07C0–U+07FF:
The literary language
N'Ko is evolving as a standard language of several Manding or N'Ko languagesManding languages
The Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
. It is a literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
based on a compromise dialect, which Mandens from different sub-groups use to talk to each other. They switch from their own dialect to a conventional dialect known as N'Ko. N'Ko is also known as Kangbe – the clear language.
For example, the word for 'name' in Bamanan is tɔgɔ and in Maninka it is toh. In written communications each person will write it as tô in N’Ko, and yet read and pronounce it differently.
Sources
- Condé, Ibrahima Sory 2. Soulemana Kanté entre Linguistique et Grammaire : Le cas de la langue littéraire utilisée dans les textes en N’ko (in French)
- Conrad, David C. (2001). Reconstructing Oral Tradition: Souleymane Kanté’s Approach to Writing Mande History. Mande Studies 3, 147-200.
- Dalby, David (1969) 'Further indigenous scripts of West Africa: Mandin, WolofWolof languageWolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...
and FulaFula languageThe Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
alphabets and YorubaYoruba languageYorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
'Holy' writing', African Language Studies, 10, pp. 161–181. - Davydov, Artem. On Souleymane Kanté's "Nko Grammar"
- Everson, MichaelMichael EversonMichael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
, Mamady Doumbouya, Baba Mamadi Diané, & Karamo Jammeh. 2004. Proposal to add the N’Ko script to the BMP of the UCS - 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 Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida.
- Oyler, Dianne White (1997) 'The N'ko alphabet as a vehicle of indigenist historiography', History in Africa, 24, pp. 239–256.
- 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 Kanté, un philosophe-innovateur traditionnaliste maninka vu à travers ses écrits en nko', Mande Studies, 3, pp. 99–131.
- 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 12-11-2004 (UNESCO)
External links
- N'Ko Institute
- 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
- 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
- The Quran in N'ko
See also
- :commons:Category:N'Ko letters