N'Ko

Infobox Writing system
name=N'Ko
type=alphabet
time=1949 to the present
languages=N'Ko
creator=Solomana Kante
iso15924=Nkoo
sample=NKo-script.svglanguage
name=N'Ko
familycolor=Niger-Congo
states=Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali
region=West Africa
speakers=c. 27 million (mother tongue and second language); see Bambara, Mandinka, Maninka, and Dioula
fam2=Mande
fam3=West Mande
fam4=Manding
agency=Kurukan fuwa gbara (Association Kurukan fuwa gbara - [http://kanjamadi.com] )
iso1=-
iso2=nqo
iso3=nqo

N'Ko (ߒߞߏ) is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term "N'Ko" means 'I say' in all Manding languages.

The script has a few similarities to the Arabic alphabet, notably its direction (right-to-left) and the connected letters. It obligatorily marks both tone and vowels.

History

Kante created N'Ko in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a "cultureless people" since there was prior to this time no indigenous African writing system for his language. N'Ko came first into use in Kankan, Guinea, as a Maninka alphabet and was disseminated from there into other Mande-speaking parts of West Africa. "N'Ko Alphabet Day" is April 14, relating to April 14, 1949, the date the script is believed to have been finalized.

The introduction of the alphabet led to a movement promoting literacy in the N'Ko alphabet among Mande speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa (Oyler 1994).

Current usage

As of 2005, it is principally used in Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire (respectively by Maninka and Dioula-speakers), with an active user community in Mali (by Bambara-speakers). Publications include a translation of the Qur'an, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers. The literary language used is intended as a "koine" blending elements of the principal Manding languages (which are mutually intelligible), but has a particularly strong Maninka flavour.

The Latin script with several extended characters (phonetic additions) is used for all Manding languages to one degree or another for historical reasons and because of its adoption for "official" transcriptions of the languages by various governments. In some cases, such as with Bambara in Mali, promotion of literacy using this orthography has led to a fair degree of literacy in it. Arabic transcription is commonly used for Mandinka in The Gambia and Senegal.

Letters

The N'Ko alphabet is written from right to left, with letters being connected to one another.

Vowels

Consonants

N'ko and computers

With the increasing use of computers and the subsequent need to grant universal access to information technology, the challenge arose of developing ways to use N'ko on computers. From the 1990s on, there were efforts to develop fonts and even web content by adapting other software and fonts. A pre-Windows word processor called "Koma Kuda" was developed by Prof. Baba Mamadi Diané from the University of Cairo.Fact|date=February 2007 However the lack of intercompatibility inherent in such solutions was a block to further development.

UNESCO's Programme Initiative B@bel supported the preparation of a proposal to encode N'Ko in Unicode. In 2004, the proposal, presented by three professors of N'Ko (Baba Mamadi Diané, Mamady Doumbouya, and Karamo Kaba Jammeh) working with Michael Everson was approved for balloting by the ISO working group WG2. In 2006 N'Ko was approved for Unicode 5.0. The N'ko script is now encoded in Unicode 5.1 as Unicode code points U+07C0 to U+07FA inclusive.

Pango 1.18 and GNOME 2.20 have native support for the N'ko languages.

The literary language

N'Ko is evolving as a standard language of several Manding or N'Ko languages. It is a literary language based on a "compromise dialect" which Mandens from different sub-groups use to talk to each other. They switch from their own dialect to a conventional dialect known as N'Ko. [http://www.fakoli.net/nko/tutorial/intro.html] . N'Ko is also known as "Kangbe" - the clear language.

For example, the word for 'name' in Bamanan is "toko" and in Maninka it is "toh". In written communications each person will write it as "tô" in N’Ko, and yet read and pronounce it differently.

References

* [http://mandelang.kunstkamera.ru/files/mandelang/konde.pdf Condé, Ibrahima Sory 2 . Soulemana Kanté entre Linguistique et Grammaire : Le cas de la langue littéraire utilisée dans les textes en N’ko] (in French)
*Conrad, David C. (2001). Reconstructing Oral Tradition: Souleymane Kanté’s Approach to Writing Mande History. "Mande Studies" 3, 147-200.
* Dalby, David (1969) 'Further indigenous scripts of West Africa: Mandin, Wolof and Fula alphabets and Yoruba 'Holy' writing', "African Language Studies, 10, pp. 161–181.
* [http://mandelang.kunstkamera.ru/files/mandelang/davydov.pdf Davydov, Artem. On Souleymane Kanté's "Nko Grammar"]
* Everson, Michael, Mamady Doumbouya, Baba Mamadi Diané, & Karamo Jammeh. 2004. " [http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2765.pdf Proposal to add the N’Ko script to the BMP of the UCS] "
* Oyler, Dianne White (1994) "Mande identity through literacy, the N'ko writing system as an agent of cultural nationalism". Toronto : African Studies Association.
* Oyler, Dianne (1995). For ‘All Those Who Say N'ko’ N'ko Literacy and Mande Cultural Nationalism in the Republic of Guinea. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida.
* Oyler, Dianne White (1997) 'The N'ko alphabet as a vehicle of indigenist historiography', "History in Africa", 24, pp. 239–256.
* Singler, John Victor (1996) 'Scripts of West Africa', in Daniels, Peter T., & Bright, William (eds) "The World's Writing Systems", New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. pp. 593–598.
* Vydrine, Valentin F. (2001) 'Souleymane Kanté, un philosophe-innovateur traditionnaliste maninka vu à travers ses écrits en nko', "Mande Studies", 3, pp. 99–131.
* Wyrod, Christopher. 2008. A social orthography of identity: the N’ko literacy movement in West Africa. "International Journal of the Sociology of Language" 192:27-44.
* [http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17488&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html B@bel and Script Encoding Initiative Supporting Linguistic Diversity in Cyberspace] 12-11-2004 (UNESCO)

External links

* [http://www.nkoinstitute.com/ N'Ko Institute]
* [http://www.kanjamadi.com/ Kanjamadi]
* [http://lughat.blogspot.com/2005/05/nko.html Observations on the use of N'ko]
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/nko.htm Omniglot page on N'ko, with more links]
* [http://home.gwu.edu/~cwme/Nko/Nkohome.htm N'ko tutorial site with information on N'ko publications and contacts]
* [http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Manding Information about Manding languages]
* [http://www.fakoli.net/nko/tutorial/intro.html An introduction to N'Ko]
* [http://www.panafril10n.org/panafrloc/Casa-NKO.pdf "Casablanca Statement" (on localization of ICT) translated & written in N'Ko]
* [http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Nko PanAfriL10n page on N'Ko]
* [http://www.islamhouse.com/d/files/nk/ih_books/nk4049.pdf The Quran in N'ko]

ee also

*