Mende font

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"Mɛnde yia" in the Mende script Kikakui (read from right to left)

The Mende script or Kikakui is a syllable script used by the West African Mende people to record their Mende language, which belongs to the Mandinka group .

It was developed by Mohammed Turay and later by his Koran student Kìsmi Kamára , although it is not clear to what extent it was influenced by the Vai script or the Arabic script . There is also a corresponding number writing system, which is also entirely original and, like the letters of the script, is written from right to left.

example

Ki-ka-ku in Kikakui: As in Arabic, it is written and read from right to left.

Mende-ku.jpg Mende-ka.jpg Mende-ki.jpg
ku ka ki

history

The Mende script was created by Mohammed Turay (born around 1850), an Islamic scholar, in the city of Maka in the Barri chiefdom (in the south of what is now Sierra Leone ).

One of Turay's Koran students was a young man named Kìsmi Kamára. Kamára was also the grandson of Turay's sister. Turay developed a form of writing called 'Mende Abajada' (in German Mende alphabet ), which was inspired by the Vai syllabary and the consonant script of the Arabic alphabet .

Turays Mende Abajada was expanded in terms of the arrangement of the characters by Kamára, who tried to adapt the first 42 characters of the script so that the script represents an Abugida script . Kamára developed the script further (with the help of his brothers) adding more than 150 other syllable characters. He gained the font's popularity and gained quite a following as a result; he used this to establish himself as one of the most important chiefs in the south of Sierra Leone at that time (he was not a simple village master before).

Kikakui is still used today, but only 500 people can use it correctly. The Latin alphabet has Kikakui among the Mende largely replaced -Sprechern.

In June 2014 the font was included in the Unicode 7.0 standard as the Unicode block Mende font (U + 1E800 – U + 1E8DF).

literature

  • Saki Mafundikwa: Afrikan Alphabet. The Story of Writing in Africa . Mark Batty Publisher, West New York 2006, ISBN 0-9724240-6-7 .
  • Konrad Tuscherer: The #Kikakui '(Mende) syllabary and number writing system: descriptive, historical and ethnographic accounts of a West African tradition of writing. University of London, 1996.
  • Konrad Tuchscherer: African Script and Scripture: The History of the Kikakui (Mende) Writing System for Bible Translations . In: African Languages ​​and Cultures , Vol. 8 (1995), No. 2, pp. 169-188.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Unicode 7.0.0. Unicode Consortium, June 16, 2014, accessed June 17, 2014 .