GeoSeven wrote:Those countries you mentioned have the means to sustain the use of their own scripts which were established for centuries.
Im not saying using a Somali script today would makes us stupid, im meant that we wouldn't even have the resources to nurture it and facilitate its use. You would need dedicated printing companies, keyboards, instructional content...probably a more unique and revised curriculum. Now imagine Somalia today with it's own unique non-latin script? Academia would have been in a tight situation for two decades because all those resources would be missing.
That is what the Ministry of Information states, sxb. See
here for yourself.
Up until around the 1950s, it was generally believed by mainstream scholars that Sudan's history was considerably more rudimentary than that of its Egyptian neighbor to the north. Only a few authorities asserted otherwise. Fast forward a half century and many in-depth excavations later, and the total number of pyramids that have been discovered in Sudan almost twice outnumber those found in Egypt.
Somalia is now where Sudan was in 1950. It's virgin territory. Had there not been a civil war, we can be pretty certain that many new discoveries would have been uncovered throughout the country. With proper direction, however, the potential is still very much there.
So far, there have only been two major national excavations. One was conducted in the 1970s by a Somali-British team of researchers and was funded by the Kacaan government. The other was a Russian-led expedition around the same period. The Russians didn't widely publish their results. However, the Somali-British team did release their findings, and they came upon many ancient monuments, tombs, coins, etc. That's just one expedition, mind you. Imagine what archaeologists excavating full-time like they do in the Nile Valley would recover.
Anyway,
here's Siad Barre discussing the ancient Somali script, and why his administration settled on the Latin script over the other Somali writing systems:
We find the Roman alphabet more convenient. It is also international. Most of intellectuals and literate citizens are used to it, and our imported equipment are described in Roman alphabet. Technically, we find its use more viable then any other script. For instance, we have an ancient Somali script which, if we were to get emotional, we would have adopted, but we did not, because we believe in reality. As a free people, we met without the so-called foreign experts, asked ourselves which script would best serve our modern needs, and decided on Roman alphabet. As you know, the use of this new alphabet is now a national fact.
small sultanate ruling small nomadic clan can not be classed as a kingdom. Takale if a civilisation can not be remembered and does not have continuity, how can you ever claim belonging to your people? Few ancient archaeological discoveries in somali inhibited lands does not prove those civilisation ever belonged to somalis or those people ever spoke somali. All of the known history of Somalis revolve around nomadic culture and anarchism.
