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From: Troy Sagrillo <t.sagrillo@utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: West-African indigenous writing systems?
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Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 13:35:11 GMT
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Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428 wrote:
> 
> In article <4t131o$lgt@news.xs4all.nl>, mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) writes:
> -->T.Gerritsen@inter.nl.net (T.T. Gerritsen) wrote:
> -->
> -->>In the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the article "Bambara", the Bambara
> -->>indigenous writing system is mentioned, but no example is given. A few
> -->>Web searches didn't yield any result, and I would appreciate any
> -->>information on this subject.
> -->
> -->In the Brittanica's article on "Languages of the World" no mention is
> -->made of Bambara indigenous writing.
> 
> In his book on writing ("The Alphabet"?) David Diringer mentions an
> African language Oberi Okaime (? -- I last saw this book 25 years ago!)
> with its own script.  As far as outside observers (i.e. colonial officals)
> could tell the language and the script sprang up as if from nowhere -- they
> were associated with a religious movement.
> 
> I've never heard
> 
> Does anyone know anything about this?
> 
> -- jP --

Take a look at:

Singler, J.V. 1996. "Scripts of West Africa". In _The World's Writing 
Systems_; eds. P.T. Daniels & W. Bright. Oxford. (pp. 593-598).

Briefly, according to the article, there are/were as many as 16 indigenous 
writing systems among the Niger-Congo languages. Via, the best knows was 
invented in the 1830s, and the others in the 20th cent. The biblio lists a 
number of works by David Dalby (among others), who seems to be the expert 
in this area

African Language Studies 8 (1967):1-51
ALS 9 (1968):156-97
ALS 10 (1969):161-81
