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40-847: The Swahili Ajami script refers to the alphabet derived from the Arabic script that is used for the writing of the Swahili language . Ajami is a name commonly given to alphabets derived from Arabic script for the use of various African languages, from Swahili to Hausa , Fula , and Wolof . In the 2010s, there has been work on creating new Unicode characters, on keyboard mapping, and on coding script conversion programs, so that typing in Swahili Ajami Script can become as accessible as typing in Latin Script, so that texts from either script can easily and accurately be converted to

80-522: A Swahili literature scholar of British origin, in the late 19th century. This was probably the first time ever that Swahili in Ajami script was printed and published as opposed to being handwritten. However, the spread of a standardized indigenous variation of Arabic script for Swahili was hampered by the colonial takeover of East Africa by the United Kingdom and Germany . The usage of Arabic script

120-554: A distinction between a syllabic nasal followed by a voiced plosive (e.g. [m̩ɓ]) and a prenasalised voiced plosive (e.g. [ᵐb]). Both of these are written as mb in Roman orthography. The former is seen in Swahili noun class 1 (the M-wa class), and the first letter of the word is written as mīm ( م ), such as mbrazil مْبرَزِل ‎ (Brazilian person). The later is seen in Swahili noun class 9 . For this class, in Roman script, either

160-420: A letter. When a word begins with a vowel, a letter alifu is used as the carrier, with a hamza on the top (for [a], [u], [o]) or on the bottom (for [e], [i]). The writing of Hamza in handwriting is optional. In Swahili Ajami, vowels in the middle of the word are shown differently depending on whether the syllable is stressed on unstressed. In Swahili, stress patterns are predictable, as almost always they fall on

200-836: A prefix of m or n is used, reflecting pronunciation. In Ajami script, nūn ( ن ) is used all the time, reflecting grammatical consistency. An example being mbazi نْبَازِ ‎ (beans). Aspirated as opposed to non-aspirated consonants are also marked in Swahili Ajami, with a "two-eyed" hāʾ ( ھ ) similar to what has been done in the Urdu alphabet . This is not indicated in Swahili Roman script. Dental as opposed to alveolar [t] and [d] consonants, sounds unique to Mombasa Swahili, are also marked in Swahili Ajami. The dental forms are represented with Arabic letters tāʼ ( ت ) for [t̪] and dāl ( د ) for [d̪], whereas

240-462: A wide variety of languages aside from Arabic, including Persian , Malay and Urdu , which are not Semitic . Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology . For example, the Arabic language lacks a voiceless bilabial plosive (the [p] sound), therefore many languages add their own letter to represent [p] in the script, though

280-448: Is 26.9 °C (80.4 °F). The average annual rainfall is 1,512 mm (59.5 in). The monthly average temperatures are usually between 25.1 and 28.8 °C (77.2 and 83.8 °F). There are two rain seasons, with most rainfall coming between March and May and smaller rain season coming between November and December. Drier months are January - February, and a longer drier season between June and October. The places of worship in

320-714: Is in his opinion, best fitted for accurate Swahili prose. Letters in Yahya Ali Omar's orthography are based on the dialect of Mombasa. There are several consonants that represent sounds present in Mombasan dialect but not necessarily elsewhere in the Swahili-speaking world. There are 48 consonants in Swahili Ajami. Digraphs are counted as separate letters. Although the Roman orthography does not distinguish between syllabicity and prenasalized sounds, both Sheikh Yahya's manuscripts and Yahya Omar's convention make

360-594: Is noteworthy to mention the dialectical variation within Swahili. Traditionally, dialects from Lamu (on the Kenyan Coast) have been the basis for Swahili literary heritage and dominate Swahili poetry. This dialect was the basis for the Swahili Ajami script. However, this came to be challenged by the Kiunguja dialect of Zanzibar City . This dialect was used by Christian missionaries and British colonial officials as

400-554: Is the writing system used for Arabic ( Arabic alphabet ) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script ), the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts ). The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably

440-582: The Michenzani neighbourhood. Zanzibar City is served by a number of international and domestic airlines via Abeid Amani Karume International Airport . In 1592, the first English ship arrived in port. In 1824, Said bin Sultan , Sultan of Muscat and Oman established the capital of his kingdom in the city. The city was a high place of slavery , one of the main ports of East Africa for the slave trade. The famous slave trader Tippu Tip lived there. In 1846,

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480-656: The Quran , the holy book of Islam . With the religion's spread , it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols. Such languages still using it are: Persian ( Farsi and Dari ), Urdu , Uyghur , Kurdish , Pashto , Punjabi ( Shahmukhi ), Sindhi , Azerbaijani (Torki in Iran), Malay ( Jawi ), Javanese and Indonesian ( Pegon ), Balti , Balochi , Luri , Kashmiri , Cham (Akhar Srak), Rohingya , Somali , Mandinka , and Mooré , among others. Until

520-642: The Sahel , developed with the spread of Islam . To a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb (for instance the position of the dots in the letters fāʼ and qāf ). Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate the writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term ʻAjamī , which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages. Today Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and China are

560-802: The Syriac alphabet , which are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet , which, in turn, descended from the Phoenician alphabet . The Phoenician script also gave rise to the Greek alphabet (and, therefore, both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet used in America and most European countries.). In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around Petra , Jordan . These people (now named Nabataeans from

600-429: The second-to-last syllable of a word . The exceptions to this rule are extremely rare, and are usually found in words borrowed from other languages, mostly Arabic (for example, maalum ). Vowels in stressed ( second-to-last ) syllable of the word are marked with diacritic as well as a carrier letter, namely alifu (ا) for vowel [a], yee (ي) for vowels [e] and [i], and waw (و) for vowels [o] and [u]. The diacritic for

640-426: The 16th century, it was also used for some Spanish texts, and—prior to the script reform in 1928 —it was the writing system of Turkish . The script is written from right to left in a cursive style, in which most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following or preceding letter. The script does not have capital letters . In most cases,

680-459: The 19th century, continuing into the 20th century, and going on in the 21st century, a process of "Swahilization" of the Arabic script has been under way by Swahili scribes and scholars. The first of such attempts was done by Mwalimu Sikujua , a scholar and poet from Mombasa . Below are Mwalimu Sikujua's innovations in the adaptation of Arabic script for Swahili phonology: The poetry and texts written by Mwalimu Sikujua were published by W.E. Taylor,

720-438: The Arabic alphabet use the same base shapes. Most additional letters in languages that use alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet are built by adding (or removing) diacritics to existing Arabic letters. Some stylistic variants in Arabic have distinct meanings in other languages. For example, variant forms of kāf ك ک ڪ ‎ are used in some languages and sometimes have specific usages. In Urdu and some neighbouring languages,

760-520: The Arabic script is used to write Serbo-Croatian , Sorani , Kashmiri , Mandarin Chinese , or Uyghur , vowels are mandatory. The Arabic script can, therefore, be used as a true alphabet as well as an abjad , although it is often strongly, if erroneously, connected to the latter due to it being originally used only for Arabic. Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in

800-578: The Arabic script were incorporated among the assortment of scripts used for writing native languages. In the 20th century, the Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans , parts of Sub-Saharan Africa , and Southeast Asia , while in the Soviet Union , after a brief period of Latinisation , use of Cyrillic was mandated. Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of an internal Westernizing revolution. After

840-459: The Aramaic alphabet, which continued to evolve; it separated into two forms: one intended for inscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing on papyrus . This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet. The Arabic script has been adapted for use in

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880-524: The above principles can be observed. If the vowel sequence occurs at the end of the word, meaning that the first syllable in the sequence is the stressed syllable of the word : Below are some sample words where the above principles can be observed. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights : A prose by Yahya Ali Omar Arabic script Co-official script in: Official script at regional level in: The Arabic script

920-564: The alveolar ones are represented with unique letters, similar in shape to Urdu letters Ṭe ( ٹ ) for [t] and Ḍal ( ڈ‎ ) for [d]. Dental versus alveolar [t] and [d] are not distinguished in Swahili Roman orthography, nor in unmodified Arabic script. Unfortunately, online script conversion tools are unable to distinguish between the above nuances unique to Ajami script, and they render all text as they would correspond to Roman. Manual editing of text will be required. However, these diacritics cannot be written on their own and independent of

960-414: The basis for the Latin Script. In the most recent and most widely acknowledged orthographic standard, devised by Mu’allim Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar, the dialect of his hometown Mombasa has been chosen as the basis. This is, according to Yahya Ali Omar himself, because this dialect has historically been affected by all vernacular varieties of Swahili and it has formed the basis of literary Swahili. This dialect

1000-455: The city are predominantly Muslim mosques. There are also Christian churches and temples: Roman Catholic Diocese of Zanzibar ( Catholic Church ), Anglican Church of Tanzania ( Anglican Communion ), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania ( Lutheran World Federation ), Baptist Convention of Tanzania ( Baptist World Alliance ), Assemblies of God . For parliamentary elections, Tanzania

1040-787: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the Turkic languages of the ex-USSR attempted to follow Turkey's lead and convert to a Turkish-style Latin alphabet. However, renewed use of the Arabic alphabet has occurred to a limited extent in Tajikistan , whose language's close resemblance to Persian allows direct use of publications from Afghanistan and Iran. As of Unicode 15.1, the following ranges encode Arabic characters: Used to represent / ɡ / in Morocco and in many dialects of Algerian . Most languages that use alphabets based on

1080-724: The island had 360,000 enslaved for 450,000 inhabitants. In 1866, the British explorer David Livingstone (1813–1873) stayed in Zanzibar to prepare his last expedition to Tanzania. In 1892, Zanzibar was declared a free port . Zanzibar City has a tropical climate, very similar to whole Unguja island, and slightly hotter than what is found in Pemba . This climate is classified as a tropical monsoon climate ( Köppen climate classification Am ). The average temperature in Zanzibar City

1120-423: The letter Hā has diverged into two forms ھ ‎ dō-čašmī hē and ہ ہـ ـہـ ـہ ‎ gōl hē , while a variant form of ي ‎ yā referred to as baṛī yē ے ‎ is used at the end of some words. Zanzibar City Zanzibar City comprises two main parts, Stone Town and Ng'ambo (literally: "The Other Side"); the two areas were historically divided by a creek since filled in, with

1160-470: The letters transcribe consonants , or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads , with the versions used for some languages, such as Kurdish dialect of Sorani , Uyghur , Mandarin , and Bosniak , being alphabets . It is the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy . The Arabic alphabet is derived either from the Nabataean alphabet or (less widely believed) directly from

1200-547: The local Chimbalazi dialect of Swahili. In his proposal, he maintained the use of tiny letters for representing prenasalized consonants just as Mwalimu Sikujua had done. Whereas, Mu’allim Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar from Mombasa decided to do what is done in the Latin script, namely to just write the letters mīm ( م ) or nūn ( ن ) as part of the word. For example, the number two ( mbili ) will be written as مبِيلِ ‎ and بِۘيلِ ‎ respectively in either standard. Furthermore, on top of orthographic variations, it

1240-407: The main non-Arabic speaking states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Azerbaijani , Baluchi , Brahui , Persian , Pashto , Central Kurdish , Urdu , Sindhi , Kashmiri , Punjabi and Uyghur . An Arabic alphabet is currently used for the following languages: With the establishment of Muslim rule in the subcontinent , one or more forms of

Swahili Ajami - Misplaced Pages Continue

1280-516: The mid 1940s, 3 prominent Swahili literature scholars of British origin noted on the writing of Swahili in the urban centre of Mombasa . They noted that at the time, a standardized reformed Arabic script had been adopted by writers of the city. While they only made use of the three original vowels, they had consistency in indicating the stressed syllable by writing Arabic long vowels using alif , wāw , and yāʼ ( ا, و , ی ). Colonial administrators as well as prominent Swahili scholars, despite recognizing

1320-521: The name of one of the tribes, Nabatu) spoke Nabataean Arabic , a dialect of the Arabic language. In the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE, the first known records of the Nabataean alphabet were written in the Aramaic language (which was the language of communication and trade), but included some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language which they spoke. They wrote in a form of

1360-477: The need for implementation of reform in the script, citing local opposition and conservativity, were anxious to do so and impose it on the populace in a top-down manner. The process of standardization of Swahili Ajami script continued into the 20th century. However, scholars did not always follow or propose the same standard. For example, Hajj Nur b. Muhammad Hajj Nur, being from Barawa in Somalia, worked based on

1400-458: The other, and to have a tool digitize and upload historic texts and manuscripts in Swahili for the sake of their preservation. Dr. Kevin Donnelly of SOAS has worked on that and on digitizing historic Swahili manuscripts. Up until the latter half of the 19th century, there was no specific "Swahili script". It was Arabic script with no modification that was used. Starting from the later half of

1440-533: The specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: Indian and Turkic languages written in the Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters , whereas the languages of Indonesia tend to imitate those of Jawi . The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. When

1480-746: The street on the Stone Town side of the creek originally called Creek Road but later renamed to Benjamin Mkapa Road. Stone Town is the historical core of the city, the former capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate ; because of its unique architecture and culture, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Ng'ambo is a much larger, modern area that developed around Stone Town after the Zanzibar Revolution , with office buildings and large apartment blocks such as those of

1520-419: The vowel sequence occurs in the middle of the word or at the end of the word. If the vowel sequence occurs in the middle of the word: And in addition to above conventions, if the second syllable in the vowel sequence is the stressed ( second-to-last ) syllable of the word, alifu (ا), yee (ي), or waw (و) are also written in correspondence with the vowel of the syllable. Below are some sample words where

1560-429: The vowels [a], [i], or [u] can be omitted, but this is not recommended. This practice of indicating the stressed syllable also helps to delimit individual words in the Ajami script. Below are some sample words where the above principles can be observed. In Swahili Ajami script, to denote vowel sequences, hamza and either alifu (ا), yee (ي), or waw (و) are used. There are different conventions depending on whether

1600-563: Was suppressed in German East Africa and to a lesser extent in British East Africa . Nevertheless, well into the 1930s and 1940s, rural literacy rate in Arabic script as well as a local preference to write Swahili in this script was high. But it is important to note that literacy at the time was in unmodified Arabic script , and not the modified scripts that were thus far proposed by the likes of Mwalimu Sikujua. In

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