----- Message d'origine ----- De: "Don Osborn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I've thought for instance about the small number of schools here in Niger > that teach in Tamajak, using the Latin based script and how easy it will or > will not be for the students to make the connections with the Tifinagh that > is traditionally used. It would be tidy to have one-to-one correspondences, > but even if not, some fairly consistent rules would help. I'm not sure the > extent to which people working on Tamajak in Latin orthography (presumably > from the spoken language) make reference to traditions of spelling with > Tifinagh, but it would seem essential. The Touareg (like the new Volkswagen) traditionnal usage of Tifinagh is very defective if recall properly Hanoteau (in its Tamachek' Grammar this from memory, not being at home) : geminates not noted, short vowels usually not written, etc. I'm not too sure how you can pass from traditional Touareg Tifinagh to the Latin-based script. > And it is perhaps imporant too to take this on a broader scale to understand > the traditional ways of writing Berber in Tifinagh (and Arabic) and to > harmonize the Latin transliterations in the region. It may well be that > aside from whatever complexities there may be on the character-to-character > level, that there may be different conventions arising in the language(s) as > written in different scripts - not to mention that there may still be work > yet to do in standardizing spellings in either script within any given > variety of Berber. Dealing with such issues would not be served by treating > Tifinagh as anything less than a script in its own right. I also believe it but I'm also not sure that Tifinagh -- still not encoded -- is best served by us waiting until Latin transliterations of Berber (Chleuh, Kabyle,Tamachek') are harmonized among populations scattered in many countries. P. A.
