Why West Africa keeps inventing writing systems

These dozens of modern African scripts are adding a brand new chapter to the history of writing!

~ Briefly ~

Meet Adlam, N'ko, Vai and over twenty more scripts that capture West African linguistic features and give new visual representation to native West African tongues.

Topics covered:
- backstories of Adlam and N'ko
- list of many other scripts
- examples of African scripts beyond West Africa
- prenasalized stops like ᵐb
- labiovelars like g͡b
- vowel length in Fula
- length and tone in N'ko
- nasalization as an areal feature
- older visual codes like N'sibidi and Adinkra
- sociolinguistics of script creation

See the sources doc below for much more information.

~ Credits ~

Art, narration, animation and four pieces of music by Josh from NativLang

Sources for claims made, plus credits for music, fonts, sfx:

~ Music ~

Please see my doc above for full credits. Public domain credits:

Teko, song of nostalgia, traditional music of Burkina Faso, Tuasgo & Gouama accompanied by Kondé:

Creative Commons credits:

Monkoto by Kevin MacLeod

Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod

Kumasi Groove by Kevin MacLeod

Silver Flame by Kevin MacLeod

Infados by Kevin MacLeod

[chukstristan]

As a West African, it was fascinating to see the anatomical visualization of the deft needed to enunciate the 'gb' sound. I really can now understand how challenging it would be for a non-native speaker 😂

[Mezelenja]

As a West African, I didn't even know Soninke had a written form untill I went to the village my parents grew up in Senegal. It was soo confusing to know how to speak a language, but not read it. Shit broke my brain a lil bit.

[rogerwilco]

I think I could enjoy an episode on any of these separately.

[dionyzus]

When you said the meaning of the acronym "Adlam" ("The letters that protect the people from vanishing"), I got thrilled. What a deep meaning that carries. Language is indeed a way to keep the culture of a people alive.

[the_jujuman]

I’m actually almost done with a keyboard for Nsibidi and it’s really fun to learn. Nsibidi is precolonial and existed within Nigeria and Cameroon as early as 9 BCE

[benw]

One of the most interesting things about the start of this, is that a couple of kids, just 10 and 14, would decide to invent a writing system to sound out their language, based on what they knew of another one, but inventing their own original one, not as a secret code, but to write normally, so it's easy for their own people and language. Really great, really smart, and it goes to show that kids/teens can be as smart or smarter than the adults around them, just as much as they might also screw up and lack experience, they can create, invent, and can know and do, without it being a problem that they are "just kids or just teens."

[puntellipuna]

This title has the same feel as “Why do things keep evolving into crabs?”

[asa.pankeiki]

I am head over heels for West African writing systems for how inspiring they are at giving languages their own literary “faces.” I hope you’d look into the Cherokee syllabary and other Native American writing systems in the future!

[wheels]

I'm sorry, but are we just going to gloss over the fact that one of the languages appears to rely on *color* to convey information? Can we get a video on THAT beautiful beast please?

[vonnedavienwilson]

the way you illustrated falling, rising, low, high by actually tonalizing these words in the way it functions was brilliant. this is such a great video. wow. wow wow. i truly appreciate this.

[asyndeton]

MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING

[NativLang]

Which of these beautiful scripts grab your attention? One interesting note to add: there are many consonant-vowel alphabets here but also syllables, featural signs, logograms...

[Fred_uyz]

History is being written ...
Writing being historied?
Writing is making history?
History making writing?
Writing history?
History in the writing?

Oh well, lets just say this is a very historical moment

[alexgentry]

An episode on each of these writing systems please! More African writing systems need to be represented to illustrate the diversity and beauty of Africa and to get more people to learn these languages! Thanks so much for what you do!

[rivengle]

There's something so beautiful about a writing system fitted exactly for the language it represents.

[HenrikP]

I really appreaciate the focus you put on less covered geographic areas, Central Asia, West Africa, the Caucasus and the like. Not that the linguistics of more familiar areas aren't interesting, but it's wonderful to hear stories from elsewhere, to give context and flavour and personality to places and peoples so often glossed over, or bunched together into one, despite massive differences that'd make all of our European world's variety seem insignificantly small.

[afinoxi]

Back when I was little when I used to keep a journal, I learned how to read and write in Cyrillic so that nobody other than me could read it lmao, I imagine a lot of scripts are born for reasons like that

[klml]

Thank you for shedding the light on the most misunderstood cultures in the world

[itstadiwa]

I actually invented my own writing system that I use for my language (Shona🇿🇼🇿🇼) 🤣🤣 I have many of them. I run them by my brother to see if he thinks they look "african" and if he agrees then I use it. It started with conlangs for my novel, but then I realised I wanna take notes about other stuff👀👀 without raising eyebrows so I was I made one. I have Alphabetic, Abugidas, Abjads (arabic), and featural (Korean type - written in blocks).

[mcoates]

BRO this is SO COOL. I've always been interested in script-making as an extension of linguistics, so I'm definitely going to have to research this more.