Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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SYLLABIC SYSTEMS OF WRITING
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by Kisimi Kamára (or Kamála), a native Muslim tailor of Vama (Bari), who accomplished his task in three and a half months. Later, owing to the efforts of the local chief Vandi Kong of Potoru, the script (Fig. 93, 1) was adopted in various other places.
It is not clear whether it is an original creation or a transformation of already existing symbols, nor how much its invention was influenced by other scripts, particularly by the Vai syllabary and the Arabic alphabet.
Professor Raymond Firth-it is a pleasure to me to express my indebtedness to him for this information and to thank him for allowing me to use it before he himself does-anthropologist at the London School of Economics, recently (August, 1945) tried to collect some more information about this script. He inquired about it amongst the natives of Bo (a large place of about ten thousand inhabitants), and was told that only about ten people in the town knew this writing. At his dictation, one of the "literates" wrote three phrases (Fig. 93, 2-4). When later Professor Firth tested another native, only the first two syllables of the first phrase were read correctly. He was also told that the script was very seldom employed, though it was used to write to friends and was known to others besides the Muslims. Any Mende dialect can be written in it. Some syllables are not necessarily always expressed by the same sign.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. T. Sumner, "SIERRA LEONE STUDIES," 1932.
A. Klingenheben, "AFRICA," 1034
R. Eberl-Elber, Westafricas letztes Reetsel, Salzburg-Graz, etc., 1936.
J. Friedrich, Die Silbenschrift des Mende-Negers Kisimi Kamala (Zu einigen Schrifterfindungen der neuesten Zeit), "ZEITSCHR. DER DEUTSCH. MORGENL. GESELLSCH., 1938.
Personal information from Professor Raymond Firth of the London School of Economics.
Artificial Scripts of Native Canadian Tribes
With the exception of the already mentioned Cherokee syllabary, and apart from the phonetic systems devised by linguists for purely scientific purposes, the earlier systems of writing Indian American languages have been devised by missionaries eager to convert the natives to Christianity. John Eliot was the first of a long series of Englishmen who set themselves to the task of giving a written form to a native North American language. Graduating from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1623, he arrived in Massachusetts in 1631, learned the native language, preached in it, became "phonetician, lexicographer, grammarian all in one." He set to work on the translation of the Bible in the native tongue, and the whole Bible was printed in 1663. However, he did not design a special system of writing, but adapted the Roman characters to the native speech.
Cree Syllabary
James Evans was the first European to devise a system of writing for an Indian American form of speech. He invented the Plain Cree character which is partly syllabic and partly alphabetic. The script is very simple and purely geometric (Fig. 94, 1). It consists of twelve
