Hello Suzanne, all,

There's a lot we don't know, or didn't know, about Mandombe (that is
"we" outside of RDC & Congo, and with English as the main language of
discourse). There is some more info at
http://www.bisharat.net/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Mandombe ,
including some links.

I won't defend Michael's statements on this issue, but I would put it
into a larger context. On the one hand there is a very successful
script of recent origin in the Mandephone areas of West Africa - N'ko
- that shows the potential viability of new writing systems. I won't
contend that it is better than others, but simply note that it has
caught on, and local people are teaching it to their peers. As a
script for a first language / lingua franca, and as a movement it
seems to have a positive effect on literacy, education, and local
initiative (and without outside donor assistance & agendae). Older
invented scripts in the region, such as Vai and (Mende) Kikakui
persist and have been valuable to people locally without a lot of
attention from outside.

On the other hand there are a number of new or would-be scripts
proposed by individuals or small groups that dn't seem to have much
chance at viability. On Unicode-Afrique it was noted earlier that a
professor in Senegal was going to devise a new alphabet for all of
Africa, and that a merchant in Gambia was going to act on a dream
about a new writing system. In the case of Hausa there have been a at
least three proposals other than the standard Boko (Latin-based) and
traditional Ajami (Arabic-based) orthographies:
http://www.bisharat.net/Demos/Hausa_alphabet.htm
http://www.bisharat.net/Demos/Hausa_alpha_2.htm
http://www.bisharat.net/Demos/Hausa_alpha_3.htm

At a certain point, one starts to question the usefulness of such new
propositions, however well intended and rationalized they may be.
Invention of new alphabets is of course not limited to Africa, as
members of this group would know, but because of the history of that
continent, indigenous alphabets are for many a potential source of
identity and authenticity that was compromised by colonial occupation
etc. However, too many new alphabets would seem to be
counterproductive to larger goals of education, communication, and
regional unity.

In the case of Mandombe, it does appear to one seeing it for the first
time to be an impossibly complex maze. Understanding a little more
about its tightly logical organization, it called to my mind something
I read in passing some years ago (forget the reference, but it was a
forgettable script) as a new writing system for the world. By that I
mean that with many small changes on a base, you can have many
different sounds, but the resulting similarity of everything meant you
had to pay very rapt attention to each form in order to read text in
it (or so it seemed to me; this was not like Chinese characters which
have many unique forms and resulting combinations, but rather used
positioning and number of dots and straight lines to make the
distinctions, as I recall).

However the proof is in the usage. Patrick raised a question about the
script a while back, but at the time few people in cyberspace had
answers and it was easy not to give much attention to the issue, and
even to think it may be just another wishful attempt to introduce a
new writing system. However he and Denis Jacquerye have researched it
a little more to bring additional info to our attention. So, if this
script is indeed actively used for one or more languages in central
Africa, then it certainly can't and shouldn't be ignored in the
Unicode process.

This shouldn't imply that every script proposed should be in the
standard, but I think we all agree on that.

Hope this helps.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:
>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
> >
> > At 21:09 +0000 2005-10-08, suzmccarth wrote:
> >
> > >Legacy standards? - or is there a difference because of the
> > >difference in language families? That is why Tamil is so different
> > >from other Indic scripts. It is from the same *script* family
> > >historically but there are so many conceptual differences.
> >
> > It has no major structural differences, however, which is why it has
> > been encoded like the rest of them.
>
> That is the point. The scripts are related, the languages are not. So
> they may look the same but users of the script think of them
> differently.
>
> However, I was just googling for Mandombe and came across your
> exchange in the Unicode-Afrique list.
>
> You say,
>
> "Est-ce qu'il y a des utilisateurs de cette «
> écriture » ? Des enfants qui l'apprennent dans
> l'école ? Je connais ce matière, mais la question
> reste... n'est-ce que le klingon soit plus « vrai
> » comme candidat pour le codage dans l'ISO/CEI
> 10646 ?"
>
> http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Unicode-Afrique/message/921
>
> I could not believe my eyes but you then repeated it here.
>
> http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Unicode-Afrique/message/929
>
> Let me get this straight. Mandombe, the script "For the Blacks" is
> less real as a cnadidate for encoding than klingon? The Mandombe
> script, used for the Kikongo language, spoken by several million
> people, is less *real* than klingon, a mythical lexicon of insults,
> written for the most part in the latin script.
>
> Do you ever intend to learn the difference between language and
> script, between reality and fantasy, and add a little courtesy? I
> notice Ogham is encoded and Shavian, etc etc. Is this how Unicode
> works?
>
> But there is more. You then say,
>
> "Cet écriture, comme chose trop
> compliqué, illisible, etc, me semble qu'un
> candidat pour le PUA. Il faut montrer qu'une
> écriture est vraiement utilisé."
>
> http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Unicode-Afrique/message/931
>
> What does it matter how this script *seems* to you - with your vast
> background in the acquisition of literacy. 'Complicated and
> unreadable' I can guarantee you that it is not.
>
> You go on,
>
> "At 15:06 -0700 2005-09-03, Patrick Andries wrote:
>
> >Que connais-tu ? Je ne pas sûr de comprendre.
>
> Mandombe : écriture négro-africaine. Manuel
> d'apprentissage à l'usage des apprenants,
> Kinshasa 1996, par David Wabeladio Payi.
>
> J'ai lu cette livrette. C'est un écriture
> construite, comme éxpliqué à
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_construite
> (voir aussi en anglais
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language
> et bien
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_script
>
> Mais comme système d'écriture pratique, c'est
> plus que douteux comme candidat pout le jeu
> universel de caractères. Mais si vous voulez
> utiliser le PUA, voir
> http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/
> --
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
>
> http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Unicode-Afrique/message/934
>
> You defend your position that Mandombe is unsuitable for encoding by
> referring to the *Constructed Language* page in wikipedia. Will you
> ever recognize the difference between language and script?
>
> Then you refer to the artificial script page, where Hangul is also
> mentioned as a borderline case. Would you unencode Hangul to be
> consistent. Happy hangul Day!!
>
> Michael, is this how Unicode works?
>
> Suzanne
>
>