Re: Ajami script

[Alain Delmotte via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl>]

Le 1/01/2023 à 11:03, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context a 
écrit :
> Am 01.01.23 um 10:21 schrieb Hans Hagen via ntg-context:
>> On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via 
>> ntg-context wrote:
>>> I just read this:
>>> https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing-system/ 
>>>
>>>
>>> And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of 
>>> typesetting this variant of Arabic. (Just out of 
>>> curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and don’t know any 
>>> African language.)
>> Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:
>
> I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The 
> article makes it sound like news, that might be the 
> perspective of the US scholars or a necessary means to get 
> funded. But the oldest sources quoted in Wikipedia are 
> from 1971 and 1982.

The arabic alphabet was also used from the XIth century to 
write swahili and some bantu languages around Tanzania and 
Kenya (Mozambic, Malawi, Uganda, east of Kongo, Sudan).

There are articles in Wikipedia.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_arabe_swahili
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language#Orthography

also: https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/swahili/  see 
"writing"
https://omniglot.com/writing/swahili.htm

>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script
>> so when there are proper fonts, as:
>> https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/
>> https://software.sil.org/harmattan/
>
> I don’t dare to ask about the Husayni fonts... ;)
>
>> it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. 
>> I get the impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used 
>> getting the way the languages sounds on paper so vowels 
>> matter. There is mentioning of transliteration and so 
>> that might need some specific support. Nothing tex 
>> (context) can't do but only users and usage can prove that.
>
> Thank you for your insights!
> Of course it’s a matter of use(r)s.
>
> All the best for a happy new year!
> Hraban
>
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