West African Scripts and Arabic-Script Orthographies in Socio-Political Context

Abstract

This chapter focuses not only on historical, but on contemporary conventions and developments, and tendencies in the scholarly development of practical Arabic-script orthographies in contrast to much of the work done on the use of Arabic script in Africa. After broad sociolinguistic survey of the concurrent use of Arabic and Roman scripts, it discusses in detail at technical issues of orthographic variation and norms. The chapter discusses Digraphia, which is common feature of African Ajami situations, usually involving Arabic and Roman scripts. It summarizes some of the distinctive problems of Arabic script use for languages in the region. Ironically it is Arabic loanwords that often present some of the greatest problems for Arabic-script orthographies of African languages. A lot more work remains to be done on orthographic conventions, regional tendencies, the choices made by particular writers, and phonetic, graphic or traditional factors involved in some of the unusual choices. Keywords: Africa; African Ajami situations; Arabic-script orthographies; Digraphia; Roman script