View Content #10617
| Contentid | 10617 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Professor Studies Ajami Script |
| Body | From http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/10/the_lost_script The lost script It’s a writing system called Ajami, it’s a thousand years old, and a Boston University professor thinks it could help unlock the story of a continent By Kenneth J. Cooper January 10, 2010 Senegal-born linguistics professor Fallou Ngom’s father was considered illiterate because he couldn’t read and write in the country’s official language, French. But like many Senegalese had for centuries, he wrote daily information in his native tongue using a modified form of Arabic script known as Ajami. Ajami script had been widely used across Africa for day-to-day writing in a dozen languages, and Ngom knew those writings had been largely overlooked in the official story of the continent - in part because so few historians could read them. Today Ngom is director of the African Languages Program at Boston University, and is training the first generation of American scholars capable of reading Ajami. What Ngom hopes is nothing less than to lay the groundwork for a reinterpretation of much of African history, using this widespread but little understood writing system to unearth new information about the daily life of Africans, the spread of Islam, the continent’s literary traditions, the Atlantic slave trade, and who knows what else. Read the full article at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/10/the_lost_script |
| Source | Boston Globe |
| Inputdate | 2010-01-17 07:53:23 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2010-01-17 07:53:23 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | 2010-01-18 00:00:00 |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
