Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
N'Ko script
Summary
N'Ko (ߒߞߏ) is an alphabetic script devised by Solomana Kanté in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa. The term N'Ko, which means I say in all Manding languages, is also used for the Manding literary standard written in the N'Ko script.
The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script, notably its direction (right-to-left) and the letters which are connected at the base. Unlike Arabic, it is obligatory to mark both tone and vowels. N'Ko tones are marked as diacritics, in a similar manner to the marking of some vowels in Arabic.
Kanté created N'Ko in response to erroneous beliefs that no indigenous African writing system existed, as well as to provide a better way to write Manding languages, which had for centuries been written predominantly in Ajami script, which was not perfectly suited to the tones unique to Mandé and common to many West African languages. A widely told story among N'Ko proponents is that Kanté was particularly challenged to create a distinct system when he, in Bouake, stumbled upon a book by a Lebanese author who dismissively equated African languages "like those of the birds, impossible to transcribe" despite said Ajami history. Kanté devised N'Ko as he was in Bingerville, Côte d'Ivoire and later brought to Kanté's natal region of Kankan, Guinea.
N'Ko began to be used in many educational books when the script is believed to have been finalized on April 14, 1949 (now N'Ko Alphabet Day); Kanté had transcribed from religious to scientific and philosophical literature, even a dictionary. These materials were given as gifts into other Manding-speaking parts of West Africa. The script received its first specially made typewriter from Eastern Europe back when Guinea had ties with the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
The introduction of the script led to a movement promoting literacy in N'Ko among Mandé speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and it has also strengthened the Manding identity in other parts of West Africa.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.