SomaliNet Forums

I always knew wadaads in Somalilamd/Somalia used the arabic font to write letters in Somali...but never knew the public especially in Somaliland also used it,guess the literacy wasn't as bad I thought back then.

This alphabet was first introduced by sheekh yosuf al Kawneen as an aid to his Quran Al-kareem teachings.

it was latter improved by sheekh awees al barawi from qadirya sofism who were later killed by the darawiish while he was on a peacful mission to stop the muslims bloodshed by the hands of the darawiish.

this is one of his poems in arabic alphabet :



its kinda hard to understand it, i guess it was in Maay dialect.

the ones from Somaliland are much easier to read..:

this one is a letter between a father and his son who was in Aden i think it was in 1933 if i converted the hijri to Gregorian right.



another one from a a guy in caynabo to his relative in Burco..:



Musa Ismacil Galal in 1950s made a big improvement on this type of Somali writtings introducing new symbols for the vowels.

The treaties of the british and various somali clans back in the 1800s were signed with arabic with the clan leaders names, i saw a document months ago, but yeah, it was common until barre done that national literacy campaign and used latin instead of arabic, which would have made sense, seeing as somali and arabic are both afro-asiatic languages whilst english/latin come from PIE

This needs to be revived, on a better scale, arabic is a useful language and imagine what would happen if somalis are proficent in both english and arabic, they can get places. However there's always going to be a few that look down upon this and say that we are copying arabs and all that lol.

Soonoqoda I couldnt agree with u more,unfortunately we put our egg on the west's basket and they turned the other check,there only interest is to fight piracy and alshabab.

there are a lot of gains in dealing aside from politics.

Btw do u have a copy u can share of these signed documents in Arabic,I think I also saw them somewhere but didnt care to save them.

I couldn't understand the 1st one. The 2nd screenshot is very clear (kinda impressed)
The last one is in Arabic language both in word and meaning, waliba Yemeni accent.

I don't agree with that. What would using Arabic add to SLAND. I rather we improve our existing alphabet, already many people back home
who write and read in Somali know English because of the similar words. Turning into Arabic alphabet will only bring us 'closer' to the Arabs.

I fail to see the benefit of such transition.

I prefer an indigenous Somali alphabet.

Shiekh Awees (AUN) will always be remembered.

Arabic does have it's problem, read the 1961 report.
http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream ... 201961.pdf

It can't be used for all of the Somali respective dialects.

PG 67/68 talks about the issues of using an Arabic script for Somali.

LiquidHYDROGEN wrote:I prefer an indigenous Somali alphabet.

Kaddare script lacks Diacritic and numerals, still better than the other indigenous Somali scripts.
Latin script is ugly to look at.
It also doesn't represent the unique af maay letters.

Check this topic out.
https://www.somalinet.com/forums/viewto ... 8&t=381369

The most important reason we chose the Latin alphabet is because it was cheaper and easier to materialise. We couldn't afford to invest knew printing equipment designed for the Arabic.

Latin is perfect for somali. Only arabphiles from the 1960s till now are advocating for Arabic alphabet, I suppose the reason is the Arabic havean.

X.Playa wrote:Latin is perfect for somali. Only arabphiles from the 1960s till now are advocating for Arabic alphabet, I suppose the reason is the Arabic havean.

You don't want to see the beautiful Somali language be written in an indigenous Somali script, such as the Kaddare?
I don't see the need while we still have a Roman script.

theyuusuf143 wrote:The most important reason we chose the Latin alphabet is because it was cheaper and easier to materialise. We couldn't afford to invest knew printing equipment designed for the Arabic.

I heard that the Arabs themselves were going to finance a modified Somali script equipped typewriters. Remember, Barre chose it in the early 70's while the debate occurred in early 60's.

The Luo speaking people and Malawians created their own scripts within the last 15 years.

Malawian script
http://mwangwego.com/faq.htm





Luo script;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMTleXNYnrE