Thanks Peter. What I'm especially interested to know is who designed
the upper case letters and how it was decided to do so and pair them
with the lower case ones (in this case, yes, phonetic IPA characters
that have been adopted into various orthographies).

It's a question about the history, that's all. My assumption based on
the Africa Alphabet document is that this decision had not been made
before 1930.

The 1966 Bamako meeting doesn't illustrate upper case versions of the
hooked letters. (Actually the discussions re upper case were mostly
about whether to use, say, the uppercase B for the implosive b rather
than the hooked lowercase É" - this convention was never adopted but
you will still see this kind of workaround these days in e-mail and such).

There were frequent references to the system used by Bargery, which
apparently was published in 1934. (I don't have a copy to verify the
form of uppercase letters)

By the time of the 1978 Niamey coference (and the apparently
unconnected work on ISO-6438), the current usage of uppercase hooked
letters was established.

So, where between 1930 and 1978 was the current convention
established? As early as 1934?

(I'll also pass the question on to John Philips of Hirosaki
University, who has studied the history of Hausa orthographies.)

Don

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
>
> Phonetic characters don't come in capital and lowercase forms, so
when the hooked letters were adopted into the Africa Alphabet, someone
decided to make capitals to go along with them.
>
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Don Osborn <dzo@...>
> To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 1:07:03 PM
> Subject: Origin of Ɓ?
>
> Does anyone have any info on the story behind the upper case hooked B,
> D, K, and Y consonants (Ɓ, Ɗ, Ƙ, and Ƴ)?
>
> At the time of publication of the Africa Alphabet (2nd ed., 1930), a
> Cyrillic-like Ƃ was used. When was the current uppercase form
> developed and linked to the lowercase form?
>
> TIA for any info. Don
>
> Ref:
> http://www.bisharat .net/Documents/ poal30.htm (Zulu sample text)
> Thanks to Denis Moyogo Jacquerye for raising a question re the form
> used in this document.
>