Afrikan Alphabets, by Saki Mafundikwa
Full title Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika.
Saki Mafundikwa is a Zimbabwean graphic designer and started ZIVA, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. About 20 years ago he became interested in the diverse writing systems developed in various African cultures, and started collecting info on them during his travels.
The topic is really broader than alphabets per se. The author explains in the beginning that he's going to use "alphabet" as an umbrella term to include alphabets, syllabaries, pictographs, ideographs, and written symbols in general. A linguist would probably cringe at lumping those all together, but honestly, African Writing Systems sounds dry and academic compared to Afrikan Alphabets and he does want people who aren't linguists to get interested in the topic.
There's lots of beautiful artwork, and the section on Bantu symbol writing was probably the most interesting of all because the meaning of each symbol was explained. Unfortunately, many of the other writing systems were just pages and pages of symbols without any explanation of how they were developed.
For some of the pictographic and ideographic systems this was baffling, because over time the symbols become very stylized and you can't tell if the symbol now identified as 'dou' started as a tree or a warrior with a shield or a field of maize or what. It's just pretty. Since the author is a visual artist, I guess he was more focused on appreciating the symbols for their aesthetic qualities more than I was.
So I found this book both moving and frustrating. Mafundikwa is passionate and eloquent about African people reclaiming traditional cultures and his desire to see a revitalization of writing systems developed in Africa, for African languages, by native speakers of those languages.
But I was frustrated that the book wasn't so much "the story of writing in Afrika" as "a scrapbook about Afrikan writing," and there were so many points where I wanted to know more. So, now I'm interested to find a book about African language & writing by someone with more of a linguistics background. And hopefully also a PoC.
(cross-posted to 50books_poc)
Saki Mafundikwa is a Zimbabwean graphic designer and started ZIVA, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. About 20 years ago he became interested in the diverse writing systems developed in various African cultures, and started collecting info on them during his travels.
The topic is really broader than alphabets per se. The author explains in the beginning that he's going to use "alphabet" as an umbrella term to include alphabets, syllabaries, pictographs, ideographs, and written symbols in general. A linguist would probably cringe at lumping those all together, but honestly, African Writing Systems sounds dry and academic compared to Afrikan Alphabets and he does want people who aren't linguists to get interested in the topic.
There's lots of beautiful artwork, and the section on Bantu symbol writing was probably the most interesting of all because the meaning of each symbol was explained. Unfortunately, many of the other writing systems were just pages and pages of symbols without any explanation of how they were developed.
For some of the pictographic and ideographic systems this was baffling, because over time the symbols become very stylized and you can't tell if the symbol now identified as 'dou' started as a tree or a warrior with a shield or a field of maize or what. It's just pretty. Since the author is a visual artist, I guess he was more focused on appreciating the symbols for their aesthetic qualities more than I was.
So I found this book both moving and frustrating. Mafundikwa is passionate and eloquent about African people reclaiming traditional cultures and his desire to see a revitalization of writing systems developed in Africa, for African languages, by native speakers of those languages.
But I was frustrated that the book wasn't so much "the story of writing in Afrika" as "a scrapbook about Afrikan writing," and there were so many points where I wanted to know more. So, now I'm interested to find a book about African language & writing by someone with more of a linguistics background. And hopefully also a PoC.
(cross-posted to 50books_poc)