Old Kanembu and Kanuri in Arabic script: Phonology through the graphic system

Abstract

Kanuri and Kanembu are closely related languages spoken around Lake Chad by about four million people. These closely-related languages belong to the Saharan family of the macro Nilo-Saharan language phylum. Before turning to the grammatological features of the Old Kanembu writing tradition, this chapter first outlines its sociolinguistic peculiarities and then gives a brief account of the texts in other varieties of Kanuri written in Arabic-based script, locally known as Ajami. Although Old Kanembu and Tarjumo are conservative varieties of the language, they have been changing in time, especially at the level of phonology which reflected changes in spoken dialects. The chapter focuses on the oldest group of manuscripts, the Old Borno Qur'āns. The scribes of the Old Kanembu glosses did not invent new Arabic-script based graphemes to represent native sounds but rather adapted the available graphic inventory of Arabic script. Keywords: Arabic script; graphic inventory; Kanuri; Old Borno Qur'āns; Old Kanembu; phonology

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.