Well, he claims that diacritics are bad.

Somali uses a roman alphabet without diacritics. There's nothing wrong with digraphs.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: Don Osborn <dzo@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 6:24:45 PM
Subject: Re: "FaYe" - a proposed new script for Yoruba

Thanks Peter. You're probably right, but I generally give such
proposals some respect, even while being skeptical. The N'Ko movement
after all began half a century ago with Souleuman Kante (not a trained
linguist or typographer) deciding to develop an alphabet for Manding.
The relative success of that may be the exception and in any event the
space for new alphabet inventions is changing: It is both easier to
develop an alphabet idea and publicize it, and less likely that it
actually be widely adopted.

On the other hand, the two invented alphabets (of the several) in
Africa that seem to be having the most success are N'Ko and perhaps
Mandombe (which was created in the '70s in what is now D.R. Congo
mainly for Kongo language). Not sure what conclusions to draw except
that it may reflect more than people with too much time on their
hands: is there something with the Latin orthographies for African
languages that somehow just doesn't work for some of their speakers?