Identify the language of this manuscript

A scan of much of the manuscript MS Leiden Or. 14.052 is available online. The main text of this manuscript is in a rather poor Arabic. The marginal and interlinear notes, however, are "in one or more West African languages", as yet unidentified. My best guess is that they're in Mandinka, based on the orthography's use of tanwīn and on the frequent word-initial a/i (suggestive of Mande's 3rd person subject pronouns), but I'm not sure; I haven't been able to decipher any phrases. Anyone else feel like having a look?

Scanned Multi-Alphabet Arabic Manuscript Online

The Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts has put a large number of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish scanned manuscripts online. Plenty of interesting stuff there, but one that particularly stood out for me was the untitled Treatise on ancient, alchemical and magical alphabets. Behold the Omniglot of its day! (Well, it's apparently only from the 1700s, but probably a copy of an older work.) It gives tables for the supposed alphabets of each prophet, with the letter names on one page and the letter forms on the next. I'll just point you to a few of the highlights:

• "Ifranji" (ie Frank) letters, that is to say lower case Latin
  
• Greek (also "Sabi" and "Rumi") and Coptic
  
• Hieroglyphics (barbāwī) - see also "Suli" and "Qinani". Needless to say, none of the values given bear any discernible relation to their actual sound values.
  
• The "letters of India", rather reminiscent of the Maldivian thaana
  
• Syriac, listed as the language of Adam (putting it several generations back from Ibn Hazm's more conservative description of it as the language of Abraham...)
  
• "Jacobite", basically Hebrew, and the "letters of Aaron", basically Samaritan
  
• Armenian
  
• Kufic (early Arabic)
  
• A table of the directionality of various scripts
  
• A comparative table of magical alphabets
  
• A Hermetic alphabet (attributed to Hermes, that is) called "Secrets of the Stones"

Knowing my readers, I suspect I'll have identifications of several of the alphabets I didn't recognise coming soon - although many, perhaps most, of them are certainly made up. Extra points for anyone who can come up with a picture of a magic bowl or something actually using one of the made-up alphabets.

Two other Arabic manuscripts there of potential interest: The conquest of Africa, from Qayrawan to Zab; Book of the Roman months.

Oldest Papuan writing?

What are the oldest written documents in a Papuan language (ie a non-Austronesian language of the New Guinea region?) I'm not totally sure, but a strong candidate has to be the court records of Ternate. The islands of Ternate and Tidore in eastern Indonesia speak two closely related languages belonging to the non-Austronesian North Halmaheran family. They have been writing using the Jawi Arabic script since at least the 1500s; in fact, some of the earliest surviving Malay manuscripts are letters from the sultan of Ternate from about 1521.

Recently I came across an 1890 book on Ternate online: Ternate: The Residency and its Sultanate. The book includes a brief introduction to the language and a word list; it also gives reproductions of several manuscripts whose originals date back to the mid-1800s, along with translations. So if you want to try your hand at deciphering them, or just see what a Papuan language looks like in Arabic script, have a look! The page I've linked to (Arabic interpolation de-italicised) starts:

ma-dero toma hijratu-nnabiyy ṣallī `alayhi wa-sallim nyonyohi pariama calamoi si-raturomdidi si-nyagisio si-rara, tahun alif, toma-arah Sawal, i-fani futu nyagimoi si-tomodi, malam Jumaatu...

"In the year Alif of the Moslem era 1296, during the month of Sawal, on a Thursday night, the seventeenth night of the moon..."

Spaced Out

Look. You know about this Authonomy website for aspiring writers, yes? I'm on it, and so is Alexander McNabb, Mr Fake Plastic Souks. He's a great writer, and he's got this really great, outrageously funny book called Space. For the last two or three weeks it has been in the Top 5 of the Editor's Desk. This means you get a proper review from a HarperCollins editor, and maybe even a publishing contract. But only if you're in the Top 5 at midnight tomorrow (31st Oct).

Here's the thing: Space has just slipped down to number 6. So, all you literaties, glitteraties and arty-farties, get along to Authonomy.com, and have a read. If you like it (and how could you not?),  do a very quick sign-up and put it on your bookshelf (the link that says 'Back The Book').

While you're at it, you could do the same thing for Tybalt & Theo, by a slightly more modest author.

Thank youse.

Me New Book

I mentioned Authonomy in my last post. A couple of weeks ago, I started a new novel, Tybalt & Theo. I've uploaded the first six chapters to Authonomy, and had loads of brilliant comments from members of the site. You can read the book sample and the comments here. But if you can't be bothered to do that, here's a selection of comments:

You're right. It's funny. It is very ,very funny indeed! It's a terrific idea but that doesn't matter doodlesquat if the writer louses it up which you certainly don't. 

- JAK

My comments are - eggy, eggy eggy! That means fantastic, by the way.

- Zoeb

Great start. Instantly reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Blackadder, which is good on both accounts.

- The Real Nick

Thanks for making me laugh...It's a great farce...I can't fault it.

- Richard P-S

Laughing like a veritable drain and looking forward to more.

- Max Brandt

Now this, I loved... I adore the quick back-and-forth between Tybalt in the 21st century and Theo in the past...SO many gems, like "Crap, he hadn't got caught up in one of those time-travelling larks, had he?" and "...like it wasn't properly rotted," made me laugh out loud... This is one that I expect to see in print. Funny!

-Melissa Conway

I think you have a lovely feel for dialogue. Have you tried any scriptwriting, I wonder?

- DeniseJane

Overall, I really liked this. You've taken on a huge task with the seventeenth century dialogue, but my, it works. Love the plot, the situations the two protags find themselves in...Stuff that made me laugh out aloud:

"….Thee Papist bastards wilt have thy grunions around thy necke afore thee canst say--"

"In-vest-meant wanker…" 

Great fun and I'll be back for more.

- Diane Oliver

Great start in a style which lets readers know there's not likely to be much messing about. Great, mate, will add more as and when I get through a little more, cheers.

- Josh Rogan

...I chuckled my butt off consistently all the way through [to] chapter 6, not only is this entertaining, but I think it should prove popular too!). We zip along merrily from scene to scene, with just enough description given for the purposes of mockery, and just enough characterization for the same. 

I thought the fake, unbelievably agrammatical Elizabethan was very funny. I mean, you're not even TRYING to make it remotely real -- "drefs" is a purely VISUAL joke, not even an auditory one!

- Kate Kasserman

This is a very funny book. Trust me, I read it. Or most of it. I'll read the rest very soon. So original, Keef. And with a few prescient..or pressy ant.... lines...e.g. Investment banker...'No, what thou dost is steal from thee poor'... Bliss.

- Scott Kenny

Brilliant, sharp, witty, with a touch of Blackadder for those who like it.

- Maria Golubeva

I really like this one - being a history graduate I usually hate historical novels and especially anything where people try and use the speech of the time, but this is very funny, and the plot idea is particularly unusual.

- Sheila

Funny and witty in equal measure. Grunions, indeed!

- Peter Booth

 Love the fast pace and funny commentary/dialogue. An enjoyable read already in the first few paragraphs.

- Dave King

Hi Keef - this is great fun and I am going to bookshelf it. The premise is hilarious and I have to say the opening section is eeeeerily prescient, aside from being hilarious.

- Robin Duff

Okay, that was hilarious. You made me laugh more than once. Especially the part about forgetting to tell Theo his task. Elizabethan sarcasm is ten times funnier, for some reason.

I'm really intrigued at the hints that Theo may not be the only time-traveller in Elizabethan England (am I reading that right?). Nice, job Keefieboy. I wish I had it now, to find out Theo's role in the new Gunpowder Plot.

- S.F. Winser

This is a great idea. I loved the switches in time and Tybalt's introduction to (presumably) McDonald's. 

A brilliantly funny read.

- Berni Stevens

Tifinagh at Leiden

There were two more talks at Leiden that I should have mentioned, on a subject I've always been interested in - Berber writing systems.

Ramada Elghamis is working on a thesis about Tuareg writing systems, and described the purpose of "ligatures" (a more appropriate term would be "conjuncts") in the Tifinagh of the Air region of Niger. Tuareg Tifinagh allows a number of letter pairs (rt, zt, nk...) to be combined into a single letter. It turns out that this is not artistic license, but an essential feature of the script. In traditional Tifinagh, no vowels are written - but if two letters are combined into a ligature, that means that there is no vowel between them, thus resolving a lot of ambiguities. For example (from memory, so details may be wrong), t-m-r-t is read "tamarit", a woman who is loved, whereas t-m-rt is read "tamart", beard; in unvocalised Arabic script, or in traditional Tifinagh minus the ligatures, there would be no way to distinguish the two.

Robert Kerr came up with a nice argument that Libyco-Berber, the pre-Roman script from which Tifinagh is descended, was adapted specifically from the Punic (early Carthaginian) variant of the Phoenician script, not the original Lebanese one and not the later Neo-Punic one. Basically, Old Phoenician marks no vowels at all; Punic marks a few vowels, almost always final ones; and Neo-Punic marks most vowels in all positions. Libyco-Berber (and traditional Tifinagh) also marks vowels only in final position; this rather odd idiosyncrasy is best interpreted as having been adopted from Punic rather than independently innovated.

Neo-Neo-Neo-Tifinagh

I went to Tizi-Ouzou today, where I bought a few Kabyle-related books. The smallest, a tiny little handbook entitled Cahier d'écriture de l'alphabet tifinagh, or Attafttar, from Editions Baghdadi, Algiers (no date of publication or author given), provided a bit of a surprise. I thought I had seen every variation of Neo-Tifinagh there was to see, but I was wrong; this illustrated children's book presents yet another one. It's essentially Chaker's Neo-Neo-Tifinagh, but with one or two forms from the Academie Berbere alphabet (b, s) plus at least one sign, Arabic ع with the curves straightened out into right angles, that I've never seen anywhere else. You know, I'm not enormously in favour of Neo-Tifinagh to begin with, but the proliferation of variant forms that you find is just ridiculous; in a sufficiently Algerian mood, I could easily believe many of them are put together by anonymous opponents of Tifinagh seeking to weaken it by spreading confusion.

Month Dos

So, here we are, just into our second month in Madrid, and everything seems to be working out just fine. BetterArf started her job today, and we went to view an adorable little flat this afternoon. It´s tiny, but newly-renovated and it has the most creative use of space ever! We´re calling it the Penthouse - it´s on the 7th floor, has a big terrace and spectacular views over Central Madrid. We get the keys tomorrow! And shortly thereafter we´ll get ADSL installed and posting will be back to normal.

My other excuse for not posting much is that I was finishing my novel - every word I had to write went into the book. It´s now finished, 80,000 very cleverly arranged words, so now I´m trying to find a visionary literary agent who can flog it to a publisher.

Later.

Miscellaneous linguistics news

I've been keeping busy lately, looking at some rather interesting grammatical facts about the Berber dialect of Ngousa (Ingusa) which I plan to talk about (among other things) at Paris in September. The vocabulary is also interesting; tiḥemẓin "couscous", for example, presumably somehow from timẓin "barley". However, a casual trawl of the news today revealed a surprising number of linguistics-related stories, which I thought I'd share:


Orangutans Play Charades When Misunderstood: For extra points, outline a scenario for the development of a fixed learned vocabulary from sufficiently frequent efforts in a small population to play this sort of charades.

Brain Responses in 4-Month-Old Infants Are Already Language Specific: 4-month-old German and French babies deal better with words stressed in accordance with the the laws of their soon-to-be-native language.

Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation: "Do fast readers rely most on letter-by-letter decoding (i.e., recognition by parts), whole word shape, or sentence context? We manipulated the text to selectively knock out each source of information while sparing the others. Surprisingly, the effects of the knockouts on reading rate reveal a triple dissociation. Each reading process always contributes the same number of words per minute, regardless of whether the other processes are operating." I wonder whether this applies in other written languages or is a peculiarity of English.

And a little multimedia on an English regional dialect from the BBC: Pitmatic.

Writing codas, from Sylhet to Winnipeg

In Greek-based scripts (like Latin or Cyrillic), unless a consonantal letter is followed by a vowel letter, it is assumed not to be followed by a vowel. This seems natural enough if you're used to it; but if you look at it differently, it's rather wasteful. The commonest sound to follow any given consonant is usually a vowel, not another consonant, so if you allow a single letter to represent a consonant plus a vowel you're saving space and effort.

But if you do that, then how do you represent the fact that a consonant is not followed by a vowel? Different writing systems use different solutions. In alphabets that have stuck more closely to their Canaanite prototype, like Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, or (traditional) Tifinagh, you normally don't bother: a consonant may be followed by a vowel or may not, and you rely on the reader to figure it out. However, sometimes the reader needs additional cues: maybe the word you're writing is obscure, or two words have the same consonants, or it's very important that the text be read exactly right with no possibility of error. In that case, in Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac, you mark what follows each consonant with a little sign above or below the letter - one sign for "a", say, another for "i", and another to indicate that nothing follows it. Such a sign is necessary if you're still mainly using the system with no vowel marking, because if you left the letter unmarked it would mean not that the letter had no vowel but that what vowel, if any, followed the consonant should be deduced from context.

Typical Indic scripts, such as Devanagari (the script used for Hindi and Nepali), adopt a rather different solution. A consonant letter on its own is to be read with a default vowel, short a ([ʌ]); a consonant followed by a consonant is written as a single "conjunct" letter, formed in any of several ways, but usually by either putting the second letter underneath the first or taking away a line on the right of the first letter and joining it to the second. On the plus side, this yields much of the compactness of a vowel-optional system without any of the ambiguity, and means that each letter is pronounceable on its own; on the minus side, this means fonts have to include a much larger number of letter forms.

Sylheti Nagri is an Indic script formerly (up to the 1950s or so) in use in the district of Sylhet, in eastern Bangladesh. Like Devanagari, it represents consonant-consonant sequences using conjuncts. However, its users were often also familiar with the Arabic script, where letters could be combined into ligatures whether or not they had vowels between them. This may have inspired them to do something rather unusual for an Indic script: develop vowel-consonant conjuncts, such as a+m, a+l, i+n... and consonant-vowel-consonant conjuncts, like pi+r, mo+t... In fact, judging by the examples in the Unicode proposal, it seems that, for at least some historic users, Sylheti did not have a conjunct system at all, just a ligature system.

One very nice solution is that adopted in Canadian Syllabics, the family of writing systems used by a number of Native American tribes in Canada. The name is potentially misleading: I prefer to reserve the term "syllabary" for writing systems like hiragana, where different syllables differ from each other unpredictably. In Canadian Syllabics, for example Cree, the shape of a symbol represents the consonant, while its orientation represents the vowel that follows it, and length or labialisation may be represented by dots. If no vowel follows the consonant, then the base shape is simply written small and superscripted, using the a-orientation, or for labialised consonants the u-orientation.

A new(ish) book on the Tamazight (Berber) of Tipasa

I've recently finished reading الأمازيغية - آراء وأمثال (تيبازة نموذجا) Tamazight: Views and Proverbs (the Example of Tipasa), by Mohamed Arezki Ferad (Algiers:Dar Huma 2004). It appears to be only about the third or fourth work ever written focusing on this dialect, but is unlikely to come to most English-speakers' attention, so I decided to review it, if only to remind myself what's in it.

The first half of the book is a set of essays on the place of Amazighness in Algeria's national identity, in which he argues that Algeria's Amazigh identity is undeniable, is relevant to the whole country and not just the minority that speak Tamazight, and complements rather than contradicts Algeria's Arab identity. The point is so obvious that it should scarcely need to be made; yet, as he notes, for decades the government used to make life difficult for those who spoke in such terms. He reminisces on his own experience (p. 54):

I remembered being excluded from the university and forbidden to teach in the history faculty in the early 1980s simply because I presented a thesis for my certificate of advanced studies on Amazigh history in Andalus in the period of the petty kings (reyes de taifa), and my viva was not scheduled until after great efforts, only to yield a blow that hit me harder than a thunderbolt: being excluded from the university and not hired by it! For the decision-makers back then thought that the thesis's topic reeked of anti-Arabism and encroachment upon the sanctity of this language which could never accept a rival! How great was my disappointment - I, a Kabyle born in a conservative environment built on Islam as its religion, Arabic for its writing, and Tamazight for its speech! I remembered - from as far back as I can recall - how we would study Arabic in Kabyle - yes, we studied Arabic in Kabyle, by the method of alif u yenqeḍ ara, ba yiwet s wadda, ta snat ufella... (ا alif has no dot, ب ba one underneath, ت ta two on top...) I remembered how we used to venerate the Arabic language and hurry to gather papers with Arabic writing on them when we found them scattered on the ground, for fear that some passer-by might tread on them with his feet... I remember how the name of "Mohamed Larbi" (lit. Muhammad the Arab) was on every tongue, with scarcely a family not using it, and the name of "Fatima" as a blessing for the Prophet (PBUH). For all these personal reasons, I couldn't understand the viciousness of the assault on the Amazigh dimension of the Algerian personality...

It is difficult for the uninformed reader to gauge whether his non-hiring was motivated by political or academic considerations; but in this quote, equally targeted at Arabists seeing Berber identity as a probably treacherous fifth column and Berberists seeing Arab identity as an alien false consciousness, he eloquently expresses the contrast between the absurd ideological concept of Arab and Berber cultures as opposing one another and the reality of traditional (and indeed modern) North African life where they intertwine inextricably. The degree to which things have improved in this regard is emphasised by the certificate he encloses from the Arabic Language and Literature Academy of Algiers stating that they've agreed to publish this book.

To reinforce the point, he devotes more than 20 pages to summarising the views of various leading thinkers of Ben Badis' Islah movement (an effort to reform Islamic practice in Algeria in the early 20th century that played a key role in reinforcing the idea of a shared non-French Algerian identity) on Berber, arguing that virtually all of them took this view (and hence that it must be the patriotic view to take...), along with a couple of Middle Eastern Arab writers whom he repeatedly mentions. He waxes enthusiastic about the constitutional amendment of 2002 that made Tamazight a "national language", and discusses the question of writing systems for Tamazight in its wake, coming out in favor of Arabic while acknowledging that, over the years of government hostility, Latin has taken the lead. While criticising the ideologues who oppose any recognition of Tamazight, he constantly dissociates himself from extremist Berberists who want nothing to do with Arabic or even Islam, warning that if the state doesn't promote Amazigh heritage, unsavoury characters of that ilk will. Here as so often in politics, it seems that extremists can be rather useful to moderates! While his doctrinaire political orthodoxy sometimes left me impatient for a more forthright style, it's probably exactly the right tone for his audience.

The second part, a set of proverbs of the area, will be reviewed in my next post.

How many ways can you write Tamazight?

I noticed an interesting set of articles in Info-Soir the other day on Tamazight (Berber) language teaching in Algeria. It confirms that Algeria has not adopted any one script as official for Tamazight: rather, all three are in use, depending on wilaya. Latin is used where Kabyle is spoken, Arabic in much of the Chaoui-speaking area, and Tifinagh in the far south. M. Touati of the Ministry of Education reports that 119,000 children in Algeria are currently studying Tamazight, 35,000 of them in a new primary school program; however, they complain of a shortage of teachers.

I'm finding it hard to gather exactly where the language is being taught, partly because the Ministry of Education website is among the slowest on earth. But it seems that, in 2001-2, it was being taught in only 5 wilayas, mainly in Kabyle-speaking areas: Bouira, Boumerdes, Tizi-Ouzou, Bejaia, and Biskra. Orders regarding the expansion of Tamazight education from 2000 were issued to a much longer list of wilayas - Oum el-Bouaghi, Batna, Bejaia, Biskra, Bouira, Tamanrasset, Tizi-Ouzou, Setif, Oran, El Bayadh, Illizi, Boumerdes, Khenchela, Tipasa, Ghardaia; but it is reported that four of these, El Bayadh, Oran, Tipasa, and Illizi, have ceased to teach it, and in Biskra and Tamanrasset it is reported that most of the few who have taken it up are Kabyle families.

I've written somewhat on this topic before, incidentally, as Awal nu Shawi recently reminded me. One of these days I need to update that essay.

Semitic snake spells pop up in Pyramids

Prof. Richard Steiner claims to have deciphered a previously incomprehensible section of an ancient Egyptian inscription as a spell against snakes written in a Semitic language. Dating from 2400 BC, this spell, engraved on the pyramid of King Unas, would be the oldest attested West Semitic inscriptions (apparently in the dialect of Byblos), and nearly as old as the oldest Akkadian inscriptions. The idea of Semitic speakers being seen in ancient Egypt as specialists in snake magic is strangely reminiscent of the story of Moses.

Unfortunately, the talk in which he announced this is only available in Hebrew ("Proto-Semitic Spells in the Pyramid Texts") - he is apparently writing up a publishable work on the subject in English - but the link contains the texts themselves (p. 7) and their transcriptions (pp. 3-4) - the bold bits are those claimed to be Semitic, while the rest is regular Egyptian. He also has up a response in English to criticisms of his claim, which apparently were not long in coming. My Hebrew is not nearly good enough to understand most of the translations he gives, but here's a couple of bits I think I got:

236: ''kbbh iti itii bitii'' = Chant: Come, come, to my house!
281: ''mmin inw 333 twb ś if w-inw hnw'' = Who am I? Rir-Rir - sweet of smell in my nose - I am they. (there just has to be a translation error in this one - probably made by me)

From these, you can see a number of recognisable Semitic words - ''iti'' for "come" (Arabic أتى 'atā, Syriac 'atā), ''bit'' for "house" (Arabic بيت bayt, Hebrew bayit, Syriac bayt-ā), ''mmin'' for "who?" (Arabic من man, Hebrew mîn, Syriac man), ''twb'' for "good" (Arabic طيب ṭayyib, Hebrew ṭôb, Syriac ṭāb)... Specifically Canaanite features, if any, are less conspicuous; the assimilation of Proto-Semitic ''n'' to a following consonant presumably found in ''if'' "nose" (Arabic أنف 'anf, Hebrew 'āp) is found in Canaanite, but also in Akkadian.

Olmec writing from 900 BC found

Almost done - just have to print it out - but I spotted this incredibly cool piece of news:
* Claim of Oldest New World Writing Excites Archaeologists - subscription-only, so see Writing on Olmec Slab Is Hemisphere's Oldest: Tablet of 62 characters dates to about 1000 BC. ('Oldest' New World writing found)

Mesoamerican historical linguists (Dave?) as well as historians must be getting fairly excited - the next oldest Mesoamerican writing was only about 200 BC.

Oh, and another classic example of confused BBC science reporting: "The finding suggests that New World people developed writing some 400 years before their contemporaries in the Western hemisphere." (!)

Naxi in Qatar

Yesterday I watched an excellent Chinese documentary called E-Ya Village at the Al-Jazeera TV Production Festival in Doha. It covered aspects of this isolated Sichuan Naxi mountain village's daily life, but focused mainly on their religion, covering what they did for naming, coming of age, mourning, New Year, various sacrifices...

The film was full of (subtitled) Naxi dialog, but what I found most linguistically interesting was the writing system. As everybody should know :), Naxi has a complex pictographic writing system of some antiquity, called Dongba after the priests of their religion. In the film, no secular books or newspapers featured, and the few signs (at the clinic's entrance) were written in Chinese; but Dongba was used several times, always in a religious context. In particular, its most obvious "practical" use was for prayer flags put up in mourning contexts: whenever these flap in the wind, the wind is said to carry the words written on them, sections of the Naxi holy book, to the realm of the dead. It suggests a functional interpretation of the Dongba writing system as one intended essentially, not for communication with the living, but for communication with the spirit world. This has suggestive if not exact parallels - consider Mandaic's traditional functions, for instance. But obviously one would want to see more than just a film to analyze the issue!

The festival, incidentally, was very international, with numerous Persian, Chinese, Latin American, and French films as well as the Arabic ones. Unfortunately, they were let down by insufficient subtitling: non-Arabic films were subtitled only in English, if at all, while Arabic films were not subtitled, substantially restricting the audience for both. Hopefully next year they'll try to remedy this.