Misplaced Pages

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104-515: Tifinagh is one of three major competing Berber orthographies alongside the Berber Latin alphabet and the Arabic alphabet . Tifinagh is the official script for Tamazight, an official language of Morocco and Algeria . However, outside of symbolic cultural uses, Latin remains the dominant script for writing Berber languages throughout North Africa. The ancient Libyco-Berber script was used by

208-476: A full stop , comma , or hyphen are also used, as well as the equivalent set for the doubled ⟨ff⟩ . These arose because with the usual type sort for lowercase ⟨f⟩ , the end of its hood is on a kern , which would be damaged by collision with raised parts of the next letter. Ligatures crossing the morpheme boundary of a composite word are sometimes considered incorrect, especially in official German orthography as outlined in

312-529: A Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke , ⟨Ƶ⟩ , as an abbreviation for Zeus . Saturn's astronomical symbol ( ♄ ) has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri , where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa - rho with a horizontal stroke , as an abbreviation for Κρονος ( Cronus ), the Greek name for the planet. It later came to look like a lower-case Greek eta , with

416-483: A V, for aqua vitae ); 🝫 (MB, for balneum Mariae [Mary's bath], a double boiler ); 🝬 (VB, for balneum vaporis , a steam bath); and 🝛 ( aaa with overline , for amalgam ). Digraphs , such as ⟨ ll ⟩ in Spanish or Welsh , are not ligatures in the general case as the two letters are displayed as separate glyphs: although written together, when they are joined in handwriting or italic fonts

520-507: A bar through the middle of the alif ), e.g. kullu n-nāsi ⟨kullu (u)l-nnāsi⟩ “all the people”. In premodern Shilha orthography, two extra letters were added to the alphabet to represent consonants not represented by the Standard Arabic alphabet: a kāf with three dots ݣ ‎ for g , and ṣād with three dots ڞ ‎ for ẓ (dots may also be added underneath the letter). Consonants ṛ and ḷ , which bear

624-502: A capital version of the Eszett never came into common use, even though its creation has been discussed since the end of the 19th century. Therefore, the common replacement in uppercase typesetting was originally SZ ( Maße "measure" → MAS‌ZE , different from Mas‌se "mass" → MAS‌SE ) and later SS ( Maße → MAS‌SE ). Until 2017, the SS replacement

728-646: A correctly spelled word, like IJs or ijs ( ice ). Ligatures are not limited to Latin script: Written Chinese has a long history of creating new characters by merging parts or wholes of other Chinese characters . However, a few of these combinations do not represent morphemes but retain the original multi-character (multiple morpheme) reading and are therefore not considered true characters themselves. In Chinese, these ligatures are called héwén ( 合文 ) or héshū ( 合書 ); see polysyllabic Chinese characters for more. One popular ligature used on chūntiē decorations used for Chinese Lunar New Year

832-440: A diacritic. Similarly, the word that was abbreviated to ⟨þ⟩ with a small ⟨t⟩ written as a diacritic. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the thorn in its common script, or cursive , form came to resemble a ⟨y⟩ shape. With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to

936-547: A different (and probably older) verb ari ~ aru ~ ara 'to write'. Before or during the existence of the ancient Berber kingdoms of Numidia (northern Algeria) and Mauretania (northern Morocco), between 202 BCE–25 BCE, many inscriptions were engraved using the Libyco-Berber script , also known as Ancient Libyan ( libyque ). The Libyco-Berber script is found in thousands of stone inscriptions and engravings throughout Morocco, northern Algeria, Tunisia, northern Libya and

1040-783: A geminated consonant without following vowel (which never occurs in Standard Arabic). Labialization is generally not represented, e.g. tagʷrsa ⟨tagrsa⟩ “plough share”. The Arabic waṣl spellings are often “mirrored” and used to write word-initial vowels, e.g. ayyur ula tafukt ⟨ayyur(u) ulatafukt⟩ “the moon as well as the sun”. Vowel length is not distinctive in Shilha, but orthographically long vowels may be used to indicate emphasized syllables in metric texts, e.g. lxálayiq ⟨lxālayiq⟩ “creatures” vs. standard Arabic orthography ⟨l-xalāʼiq⟩ . The Arabic letters ﺙ, ﺫ, ﻅ, representing

1144-479: A legitimate letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its relative youth compared to other letters of the alphabet, only a few European languages (English, Dutch, German, Polish, Welsh, Maltese, and Walloon) use the letter in native words. The character ⟨ Æ ⟩ (lower case ⟨æ⟩ ; in ancient times named æsc ) when used in Danish , Norwegian , Icelandic , or Old English

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1248-473: A letter (e.g., in early Modern English); in English it is pronounced "and", not "et", except in the case of &c , pronounced " et cetera ". In most typefaces, it does not immediately resemble the two letters used to form it, although certain typefaces use designs in the form of a ligature (examples include the original versions of Futura and Univers , Trebuchet MS , and Civilité , known in modern times as

1352-481: A ligature (for "pesos", although there are other theories as well) but is now a logogram. At least once, the United States dollar used a symbol resembling an overlapping U-S ligature, with the right vertical bar of the U intersecting through the middle of the S (  US  ) to resemble the modern dollar sign. The Spanish peseta was sometimes symbolized by a ligature ⟨₧⟩ (from Pts), and

1456-403: A minimal functional load , are not distinguished in the spelling from r and l . Texts are always fully vocalized, with a , i and u written with the vowel signs fatḥah , kasrah , and ḍammah . Consonants without a following phonemic vowel are always written with a sukūn . Gemination is indicated as usual with shaddah , but in Shilha spelling it may be combined with sukūn to represent

1560-458: A noun or verb form, e.g. ⟨urānɣiḍhir manīɣurikfis iblisī⟩ = ur anɣ iḍhir mani ɣ ur ikfis iblis-i “it is not apparent to us where Iblis has not sown [his depravity]”. Typographic ligature In writing and typography , a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph . Examples are the characters ⟨ æ ⟩ and ⟨ œ ⟩ used in English and French, in which

1664-403: A particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity. A parallel use of ligatures is seen in the creation of script fonts that join letterforms to simulate handwriting effectively. This trend is caused in part by the increased support for other languages and alphabets in modern computing, many of which use ligatures somewhat extensively. This has caused

1768-540: A reversed ⟨t⟩ with ⟨h⟩ (neither the reversed t nor any of the consonant ligatures are in Unicode). Rarer ligatures also exist, including ⟨ꜳ⟩ ; ⟨ꜵ⟩ ; ⟨ꜷ⟩ ; ⟨ꜹ⟩ ; ⟨ꜻ⟩ (barred ⟨av⟩ ); ⟨ꜽ⟩ ; ⟨ꝏ⟩ , which is used in medieval Nordic languages for / oː / (a long close-mid back rounded vowel ), as well as in some orthographies of

1872-602: A vowel and a geminated consonant may sometimes be written as if they contain the Arabic definite article, e.g. azzar “hair” written as ⟨al-zzar⟩ . Final -u or -w in Shilha words may be written with a following alif al-wiqāyah . With respect to word divisions, the premodern orthography may be characterized as conjunctive (in contrast to most European orthographies, which are disjunctive). Thus, elements such as prepositions, preverbals, pronominal affixes, demonstrative and directional particles are written connected to

1976-407: Is a combination of the four characters for zhāocái jìnbǎo ( 招財進寶 ), meaning "ushering in wealth and fortune" and used as a popular New Year's greeting. In 1924, Du Dingyou ( 杜定友 ; 1898–1967) created the ligature 圕 from two of the three characters 圖書館 ( túshūguǎn ), meaning "library". Although it does have an assigned pronunciation of tuān and appears in many dictionaries, it

2080-639: Is a double line, ||, and n a single line, |, the sequence nn may be written |/ to differentiate it from l . Similarly, ln is ||/, nl |//, ll ||//, nnn |/|, etc. Traditionally, the Tifinagh script does not indicate vowels except word-finally, where a single dot stands for any vowel (or ⵢ and ⵓ for -i and -u, respectively, in Ahaggar Tifinagh). In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh letters to transcribe vowels, or y, w may be used for long ī and ū . Neo-Tifinagh

2184-510: Is also uncertain, but it is no older than the first millennium BCE, with the oldest remains likely originating from the 6th century BCE. It disappeared in the northernmost areas of North Africa during the 8th century, after the Arab conquest of the Maghreb , Libyco-Berber along with Latin being replaced by the Arabic script. The Libyco-Berber script was a pure abjad ; it had no vowels. Gemination

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2288-592: Is called kroužek . The tilde diacritic, used in Spanish as part of the letter ⟨ ñ ⟩ , representing the palatal nasal consonant, and in Portuguese for nasalization of a vowel, originated in ligatures where ⟨n⟩ followed the base letter: Espanna → España . Similarly, the circumflex in French spelling stems from the ligature of a silent ⟨s⟩ . The letter hwair (ƕ), used only in transliteration of

2392-484: Is made by joining two or more characters in an atypical fashion by merging their parts, or by writing one above or inside the other. In printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, so the characters do not have to be joined. For example, in some cases the ⟨fi⟩ ligature prints the letters ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type

2496-460: Is no general consensus about its history. Its name Es-zett (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) but the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today's typefaces. Since German was mostly set in blackletter typefaces until the 1940s, and those typefaces were rarely set in uppercase,

2600-422: Is not a typographic ligature. It is a distinct letter — a vowel — and when collated, may be given a different place in the alphabetical order than Ae . In modern English orthography , ⟨Æ⟩ is not considered an independent letter but a spelling variant, for example: " encyclopædia " versus "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia". In this use, ⟨Æ⟩ comes from Medieval Latin , where it

2704-404: Is not indicated in Tifinagh. The letter t , ⵜ, is often combined with a preceding letter to form a ligature . Most of the letters have more than one common form, including mirror-images of the forms shown above. When the letters l and n are adjacent to themselves or to each other, the second is offset, either by inclining, lowering, raising, or shortening it. For example, since the letter l

2808-756: Is still represented with a ligature: ɮ , and the extensions to the IPA contain three more: ʩ , ʪ and ʫ . The Initial Teaching Alphabet , a short-lived alphabet intended for young children, used a number of ligatures to represent long vowels: ⟨ꜷ⟩ , ⟨æ⟩ , ⟨œ⟩ , ⟨ᵫ⟩ , ⟨ꭡ⟩ , and ligatures for ⟨ee⟩ , ⟨ou⟩ and ⟨oi⟩ that are not encoded in Unicode. Ligatures for consonants also existed, including ligatures of ⟨ʃh⟩ , ⟨ʈh⟩ , ⟨wh⟩ , ⟨ʗh⟩ , ⟨ng⟩ and

2912-886: Is still seen today on icon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in graffiti or other forms of informal or decorative writing. Gha ⟨ƣ⟩ , a rarely used letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the ISO to be an OI ligature because of its appearance, and is thus known (to the ISO and, in turn, Unicode ) as "Oi". Historically, it was used in many Latin-based orthographies of Turkic (e.g., Azerbaijani ) and other central Asian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet formerly used ligatures to represent affricate consonants , of which six are encoded in Unicode: ʣ, ʤ, ʥ, ʦ, ʧ and ʨ . One fricative consonant

3016-531: Is the ampersand ⟨&⟩ . This was originally a ligature of ⟨E⟩ and ⟨t⟩ , forming the Latin word "et", meaning " and ". It has exactly the same use in French and in English . The ampersand comes in many different forms. Because of its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a ligature, but a logogram . Like many other ligatures, it has at times been considered

3120-616: Is the de jure writing system for Tamazight in Morocco. The script was made official by a Dahir of King Mohammed VI, based on the recommendation of IRCAM . It was recognized in the Unicode standard in June 2004. Tifinagh was chosen to be official after consideration of its univocity (one sound per symbol, allowing regional variation ), economy, consistency, and historicity. Significantly, Tifinagh avoids negative cultural connotations of

3224-723: Is the modern fully alphabetic script developed by the Berber Academy , based in Paris. Initially, the academy had to choose a script to transliterate the Berber language. The choice between Tifinagh and Latin scripts then sparked intense debate both within and outside the Academy. Mohand Arav Bessaoud , a founding member of the academy and strong Tifinagh advocate, recounted the resistance he faced from prominent figures like Mouloud Mammeri and Ramdane Achab, who argued that Tifinagh

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3328-575: Is the writing system(s) used to transcribe the Berber languages . In antiquity, the Libyco-Berber script was utilized to write Berber languages. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres. Usage of this script, in the form of Tifinagh , has continued into the present day among the Tuareg people . Following the spread of Islam , some Berber scholars utilized

3432-700: Is therefore not used in Turkish typography, and neither are other ligatures like that for ⟨fl⟩ , which would be rare anyway because of Turkish phonotactics. Remnants of the ligatures ⟨ſʒ⟩ / ⟨ſz⟩ ("sharp s", eszett ) and ⟨tʒ⟩ / ⟨tz⟩ ("sharp t", tezett ) from Fraktur , a family of German blackletter typefaces, originally mandatory in Fraktur but now employed only stylistically, can be seen to this day on street signs for city squares whose name contains Platz or ends in -platz . Instead,

3536-701: The Duden . An English example of this would be ⟨ff⟩ in shelf‌ful ; a German example would be Schiff‌fahrt ("boat trip"). Some computer programs (such as TeX ) provide a setting to disable ligatures for German, while some users have also written macros to identify which ligatures to disable. Turkish distinguishes dotted and dotless "I" . In a ligature with f (in words such as [fırın] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |translation= ( help ) and [fikir] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |translation= ( help ) ), this contrast would be obscured. The ⟨fi⟩ ligature

3640-721: The ⟨i⟩ in many typefaces collides with the hood of the ⟨f⟩ when placed beside each other in a word, and are combined into a single glyph with the tittle absorbed into the ⟨f⟩ . Other ligatures with the letter f include ⟨fj⟩ , ⟨f‌l⟩ (fl), ⟨f‌f⟩ (ff), ⟨f‌f‌i⟩ (ffi), and ⟨f‌f‌l⟩ (ffl). Ligatures for ⟨fa⟩ , ⟨fe⟩ , ⟨fo⟩ , ⟨fr⟩ , ⟨fs⟩ , ⟨ft⟩ , ⟨fb⟩ , ⟨fh⟩ , ⟨fu⟩ , ⟨fy⟩ , and for ⟨f⟩ followed by

3744-568: The Afroasiatic family. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres . Among these are the 1,500 year old monumental tomb of the Tuareg matriarch Tin Hinan , where vestiges of a Tifinagh inscription have been found on one of its walls. According to M. C. A. MacDonald, the Tuareg are "an entirely oral society in which memory and oral communication perform all

3848-520: The Arabic script . Excluding among the Tuareg people, the Arabic script became the dominant form of Berber orthography. The Berber Latin alphabet was developed following the introduction of the Latin script in the nineteenth century by the West. The nineteenth century also saw the development of Neo-Tifinagh, an adaptation of Tuareg Tifinagh for use with other Berber languages. There are now three writing systems in use for Berber languages: Tifinagh,

3952-532: The Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic bind rune , figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the proliferation of writing with a stylus, whether on paper or clay , and often for a practical reason: faster handwriting . Merchants especially needed a way to speed up the process of written communication and found that conjoining letters and abbreviating words for lay use

4056-475: The French franc was often symbolized by the ligature ⟨₣⟩ (from Fr). In astronomy , the planetary symbol for Mercury ( ☿ ) may be a ligature of Mercury 's caduceus and a cross (which was added in the 16th century to Christianize the pagan symbol), though other sources disagree; the symbol for Venus ♀ may be a ligature of the Greek letters ⟨ϕ⟩ (phi) and ⟨κ⟩ (kappa). The symbol for Jupiter ( ♃ ) descends from

4160-561: The Gothic language , resembles a ⟨hw⟩ ligature. It was introduced by philologists around 1900 to replace the digraph ⟨hv⟩ formerly used to express the phoneme in question, e.g. by Migne in the 1860s ( Patrologia Latina vol. 18). The Byzantines had a unique o-u ligature ⟨Ȣ⟩ that, while originally based on the Greek alphabet 's ο-υ, carried over into Latin alphabets as well. This ligature

4264-498: The Kabyle language was established in 1970, and most other Northern Berber dialects have to varying extents published literature in the Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet has been preferred among Amazigh linguists and researchers, and also has a great deal of established writing, including newspapers, periodicals, and magazines. The "overwhelming majority of theses and dissertations on Berber in Morocco and Algeria" are written using

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4368-405: The Latin alphabet that originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was formerly written in various ways. In Old English , the runic letter wynn ⟨Ƿ⟩ ) was used, but Norman influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter ⟨W⟩ , originated as two ⟨ V ⟩ glyphs or ⟨ U ⟩ glyphs joined, developed into

4472-663: The Libyan Civil War , the National Transitional Council has shown an openness towards the Berber language. The rebel Libya TV , based in Qatar , has included the Berber language and the Neo-Tifinagh alphabet in some of its programming. Tifinagh continues to be used as "an emblem of distinctive Berber identity and nationhood." Due to the official adoption of Neo-Tifinagh in Morocco in 2003,

4576-713: The Massachusett language to represent uː (a long close back rounded vowel ); ᵺ; ỻ, which was used in Medieval Welsh to represent ɬ (the voiceless lateral fricative ); ꜩ; ᴂ; ᴔ; and ꭣ have Unicode codepoints (in code block Latin Extended-E for characters used in German dialectology ( Teuthonista ), the Anthropos alphabet, Sakha and Americanist usage). The most common ligature in modern usage

4680-586: The Massachusett-language Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God , published in 1663) was the use of the double-o ligature ⟨ꝏ⟩ to represent the / u / of f oo d as opposed to the / ʊ / of h oo k (although Eliot himself used ⟨oo⟩ and ⟨ꝏ⟩ interchangeably). In the orthography in use since 2000 in the Wampanoag communities participating in

4784-628: The Netherlands , typically use a ligature resembling a ⟨U⟩ with a broken left-hand stroke. Adding to the confusion, Dutch handwriting can render ⟨y⟩ (which is not found in native Dutch words, but occurs in words borrowed from other languages) as a ⟨ij⟩ -glyph without the dots in its lowercase form and the ⟨IJ⟩ in its uppercase form looking virtually identical (only slightly bigger). When written as two separate letters, both should be capitalized – or both not – to form

4888-490: The hashtag indicator. The at sign ⟨@⟩ is potentially a ligature, but there are many different theories about the origin. One theory says that the French word à (meaning at ), was simplified by scribes who, instead of lifting the pen to write the grave accent, drew an arc around the "a". Another states that it is short for the Latin word for "toward", " ad ", with the ⟨d⟩ being represented by

4992-431: The question mark ) and the bang (printer's slang for exclamation mark ) into one symbol, used to denote a sentence which is both a question and is exclaimed. For example, the sentence "Are you really coming over to my house on Friday‽" shows that the speaker is surprised while asking their question. Alchemy used a set of mostly standardized symbols , many of which were ligatures: 🜇 (AR, for aqua regia ); 🜈 (S inside

5096-488: The umlauted vowels ⟨ ä ⟩ , ⟨ ö ⟩ , and ⟨ ü ⟩ historically arose from ⟨ae⟩ , ⟨oe⟩ , ⟨ue⟩ ligatures (strictly, from these vowels with a small letter ⟨e⟩ written as a diacritic , for example ⟨aͤ⟩ , ⟨oͤ⟩ , ⟨uͤ⟩ ). It is common practice to replace them with ⟨ae⟩ , ⟨oe⟩ , ⟨ue⟩ digraphs when

5200-496: The "sz" ligature has merged into a single character, the German ß – see below. Sometimes, ligatures for ⟨st⟩ (st), ⟨ſt⟩ (ſt), ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨ck⟩ , ⟨ct⟩ , ⟨Qu⟩ and ⟨Th⟩ are used (e.g. in the typeface Linux Libertine ). Besides conventional ligatures, in the metal type era some newspapers commissioned custom condensed single sorts for

5304-496: The 1980s and 1990s. The Algerian Black Spring was also partly caused by this repression of Berber language . In the 1980s, the Berber flag , which was designed in 1970 and uses the Tifinagh letter z (Tifinagh: ⵣ) from the root of Amazigh , began being used in demonstrations. The flag was adopted by the World Amazigh Congress in 1997. In Morocco, following the creation of Standard Moroccan Amazigh in 2001,

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5408-486: The 2003 adoption of Neo-Tifinagh served as a way to compromise between the deeply split proponents of the Latin script versus the Arabic script as Amazigh's official orthography. This choice, however, has also resulted in backlash from many Amazigh activists, who find Tifinagh to be limiting when compared to the Latin script. In Libya, the government of Muammar Gaddafi consistently banned Tifinagh from being used in public contexts such as store displays and banners. After

5512-485: The 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for body text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include Gill Sans and Futura . Inexpensive phototypesetting machines in the 1970s (which did not require journeyman knowledge or training to operate) also generally avoid them. A few, however, became characters in their own right, see below the sections about German ß , various Latin accented letters , & et al. The trend against digraph use

5616-399: The Arabic interdentals /θ, ð, ð̣/ may be used in etymological spellings of loanwords, but they are often replaced by ﺕ, ﺩ, ﺽ, in accordance with Shilha pronunciation, e.g. lḥadit “tradition” can be written as ⟨lḥadiθ⟩ (etymological) or as ⟨lḥadit⟩ (phonemic). Final /-a/ in both native Berber words and loan words is sometimes written with alif maqṣūrah , even if

5720-602: The Arabic script, and the Berber Latin alphabet. Different groups in North Africa have different preferences of writing system, often motivated by ideology and politics. With the exception of one text transcribed in Hebraic square alphabet, no other systems are known to have been used to transcribe the Berber languages. Neo-Tifinagh , a resurrected version of an alphabetic script found in historical engravings,

5824-688: The Arabic script, which is generally unpopular among Berbers who believe it is symptomatic of the pan-Arabist views of North African governments. A consistent orthography was used in the few Berber texts in existence from the eleventh to the fourteenth century CE. These were written in an older Berber language likely to be most closely related to Tashelhiyt. The consonant g was written with jīm ( ج ‎) or kāf ( ك ‎), ẓ with ṣād ( ص ‎) or sometimes zāy ( ز ‎), and ḍ with ṭāʼ ( ط ‎). Vowels a, i, u were written as orthographically long vowels ⟨ā⟩ , ⟨ī⟩ , ⟨ū⟩ . Word-final wāw

5928-588: The Berber feminine prefix ti- and the root √ FNƔ < * √ PNQ < Latin Punicus ; thus tifinagh could possibly mean 'the Phoenician (letters)' or 'the Punic letters'. Others support an etymology involving the Tuareg verb efnegh 'to write'. However, the Tuareg verb efnegh is probably derived from the noun Tifinagh because all the northern Berbers of Morocco, northern Algeria, Tunisia and northern Libya have

6032-703: The Canary Islands. The exact evolution of both Libyco-Berber and Tifinagh is still unclear. The latter writing system was widely used in antiquity by speakers of the largely undeciphered Numidian language , also called Old Libyan, throughout Africa and on the Canary Islands . The script's origin is uncertain, with some scholars suggesting it is related to, descended or developed from the Phoenician alphabet while others argue an independent conception with slight Phoenician influences. Its first appearance

6136-452: The French digraph œu , which is composed of the ligature œ and the simplex letter u . In Dutch , ⟨ ij ⟩ can be considered a digraph, a ligature, or a letter in itself, depending on the standard used. Its uppercase and lowercase forms are often available as a single glyph with a distinctive ligature in several professional typefaces (e.g. Zapfino ). Sans serif uppercase ⟨IJ⟩ glyphs, popular in

6240-889: The Latin alphabet. Usage of the Latin alphabet for Berber is more popular in Algeria than Morocco, but prevalent in the Riffian area. It is backed by the Amazigh elite, but is vehemently opposed by the Moroccan pro-Arab establishment. The Latin script is far more ensconced in the Kabyle dialect than in Tamazight. The orthography used in most modern printed works is the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) standard, designed for phonemicity. Older systems from

6344-540: The Latin and Arabic scripts as the primary options. As of 2012, Tifinagh is "not widely used in education or the media in any country." The following are the letters of Neo-Tifinagh and traditional Tuareg Tifinagh: Tifinagh was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005, with the release of version 4.1. The Unicode block range for Tifinagh is U+2D30–U+2D7F: Berber orthography Berber orthography

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6448-472: The Latin and Arabic scripts. Tifinagh is preferred by young people as a symbol of identity and has popular support. It has also been criticized for not being practical to implement, and for being Kabyle -centric and not historically authentic. Following the Tifinagh Dahir road signs were installed in the Riffian city of Nador in Arabic and Tifinagh, but these were removed by security forces in

6552-520: The Standard Arabic spelling does not use it, e.g. zzka “alms tax” written as ⟨zzká⟩ vs. standard ⟨z-zkā ⟩ . Final -t in words of Arabic origin is sometimes written with tāʼ marbūṭah , whether or not the original Arabic word was spelled with it, e.g. zzit “olive oil” written as ⟨zzi ⟩ . Nunation diacritics are sometimes used to write final -Vn in Shilha words, e.g. tumẓin “barley” ⟨tumẓin⟩ or ⟨tumẓ ⟩ . Native words starting with

6656-564: The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP), the ligature was replaced with the numeral ⟨8⟩ , partly because of its ease in typesetting and display as well as its similarity to the o-u ligature ⟨Ȣ⟩ used in Abenaki . For example, compare the colonial-era spelling seepꝏash with the modern WLRP spelling seep8ash . As the letter ⟨ W ⟩ is an addition to

6760-518: The academy's publications and cultural activities. Negadi reflected on his efforts: "I distributed all of Agraw Imazighen's writings throughout the Aurès region starting in 1973. The goal wasn't regular correspondence but widespread dissemination of Tifinagh." Neo-Tifinagh was spread by the Berber Academy's active promotion of the script, including its usage in their bulletin, Imazighen , which

6864-407: The ancient northern Berbers known as Libyco-Berbers , also known as Numidians , Afri , and Mauretanians , who inhabited the northern parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and the Canary Islands . The word tifinagh (singular tafinəq < *ta-finəɣ-t) is thought by some scholars to be a Berberized feminine plural cognate or adaptation of the Latin word Punicus 'Punic, Phoenician' through

6968-484: The anecdote that he "[knows] that some books that were written in Tifinagh were read by only two people ... the one who wrote the book and the one who did the editing!" Public displays of Tifinagh in Morocco remains restricted primarily to signage and other culturally conspicuous uses. Despite Neo-Tifinagh's Algerian origins through the Berber Academy and UPA, the Latin alphabet became the predominant used script. Debate in what script to use for Berber languages tends to view

7072-570: The arc. Another says it is short for an abbreviation of the term each at , with the ⟨e⟩ encasing the ⟨a⟩ . Around the 18th century, it started being used in commerce to indicate price per unit, as "15 units @ $ 1". After the popularization of Email , this fairly unpopular character became widely known, used to tag specific users. Lately, it has been used to de-gender nouns in Spanish with no agreed pronunciation. The dollar sign ⟨$ ⟩ possibly originated as

7176-609: The base form of the letters is not changed and the individual glyphs remain separate. Like some ligatures discussed above, these digraphs may or may not be considered individual letters in their respective languages. Until the 1994 spelling reform, the digraphs ⟨ ch ⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ were considered separate letters in Spanish for collation purposes. Catalan makes a difference between "Spanish ll" or palatalized l, written ll as in llei (law), and "French ll" or geminated l, written l·l as in col·lega (colleague). The difference can be illustrated with

7280-452: The colonial French era are still found in place names and personal names. The older colonial system showed marked influence from French, for instance writing /u, w/ as ⟨ou⟩ and /sˤ/ as ⟨ç⟩ , and was inconsistent in marking many Berber sounds, for instance writing /ʕ/ as a circumflex over the vowel, and often leaving emphatics unmarked. Tifinagh is the traditional script for written Berber, but Latin remains

7384-464: The common " ye ", as in ' Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that ⟨y⟩ existed in the printer's types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not. The ring diacritic used in vowels such as ⟨ å ⟩ likewise originated as an ⟨o⟩ -ligature. Before

7488-415: The cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize it. The dwarf planet Pluto is symbolized by a PL ligature, ♇ . A different PL ligature, ⅊ , represents the property line in surveying. In engineering diagrams, a CL ligature, ℄ , represents the center line of an object. The interrobang ⟨‽⟩ is an unconventional punctuation meant to combine the interrogation point (or

7592-559: The cultural heritage and identity to be defended. The UPA bulletins continued to promote the Tifinagh alphabet, while activist Messaoud Nedjahi streamlined its characters from 50 to 26. This process inspired the Afus Deg Fus association to create the first set of standardized Neo-Tifinagh fonts in 1993. Neo-Tifinagh has since undergone further reform and is used in various contexts throughout North Africa. The Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture has standardized Neo-Tifinagh for use as

7696-552: The development of new digital typesetting techniques such as OpenType , and the incorporation of ligature support into the text display systems of macOS , Windows , and applications like Microsoft Office . An increasing modern trend is to use a "Th" ligature which reduces spacing between these letters to make it easier to read, a trait infrequent in metal type. Today, modern font programming divides ligatures into three groups, which can be activated separately: standard, contextual and historical. Standard ligatures are needed to allow

7800-438: The diacritics are unavailable, for example in electronic conversation. Phone books treat umlauted vowels as equivalent to the relevant digraph (so that a name Müller will appear at the same place as if it were spelled Mueller; German surnames have a strongly fixed orthography, either a name is spelled with ⟨ü⟩ or with ⟨ue⟩ ); however, the alphabetic order used in other books treats them as equivalent to

7904-419: The end of the 16th century, and is still used today in circles of traditional Islamic scholars ( ṭṭlba ). The Maghrebi script style is always used. Distinctive features of Maghrebi script are: the different pointing of fāʼ and qāf ; shaddah may be represented with a V-shaped symbol; waṣl is indicated by writing the final vowel of the preceding word a second time with the alif (with u represented by

8008-578: The established body of literature in the Arabic script was a barrier to wider adoption of the Latin script, it caught on among the French-educated minority, particularly in Algeria. Since independence, the Latin alphabet has been largely favored by the intelligentsia, especially in Kabylie where the Berberists are largely pro-Westernization and French-educated. A standard transcription for

8112-404: The facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as ⟨h⟩ , ⟨m⟩ , and ⟨n⟩ had their vertical strokes superimposed. Scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the fourteenth century employed hundreds of such abbreviations. In handwriting , a ligature

8216-517: The first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting (and later laser printers) was Donald Knuth 's TeX program. Now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets; these include FF Scala , Seria and others by Martin Majoor and Hoefler Text by Jonathan Hoefler . Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko contains

8320-411: The font to display without errors such as character collision. Designers sometimes find contextual and historic ligatures desirable for creating effects or to evoke an old-fashioned print look. Many ligatures combine ⟨f⟩ with the following letter. A particularly prominent example is ⟨fi⟩ (or ⟨f‌i⟩ , rendered with two normal letters). The tittle of

8424-439: The functions which reading and writing have in a literate society ... The Tifinagh are used primarily for games and puzzles, short graffiti and brief messages." Occasionally, the script has been used to write other neighbouring languages such as Tagdal , which belongs to a separate Songhay family. Common forms of the letters are illustrated at left, including various ligatures of t and n . Gemination , though phonemic,

8528-559: The italic of Garamond ). Similarly, the number sign ⟨#⟩ originated as a stylized abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo , written as ℔. Over time, the number sign was simplified to how it is seen today, with two horizontal strokes across two slash-like strokes. Now a logogram, the symbol is used mainly to denote (in the US) numbers, and weight in pounds. It has also been used popularly on push-button telephones and as

8632-411: The letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the first ligature and the letters ⟨o⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ are often merged to create ⟨fi⟩ (where the tittle on the ⟨i⟩ merges with the hood of the ⟨f⟩ );

8736-399: The like are mostly written as separate words. The medieval texts display many archaisms in phonology, morphology and lexicon. The way in which Tashelhiyt has been written in the Arabic script during the past centuries is very consistent, to the extent that it is possible to talk about “a conventionalized orthography”. This premodern orthography has remained virtually unchanged since at least

8840-439: The middle of the night soon after. The Moroccan state arrested and imprisoned people using this script during the 1980s and the 1990s, but now Morocco is the only country in which Tifinagh has official status. The Latin script has its origins in French colonialism. French missionaries and linguists found the Arabic script inconvenient, so they adapted the Latin alphabet to various Berber languages and Arabic vernaculars. While

8944-463: The names of common long names that might appear in news headings, such as " Eisenhower ", " Chamberlain ", and others. In these cases the characters did not appear combined, just more tightly spaced than if printed conventionally. The German letter ⟨ß⟩ ( Eszett , also called the scharfes S , meaning sharp s ) is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. There

9048-461: The new upper case character for "ß" rather than replacing it with "SS" or "SZ" for geographical names. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) has included the capital ß since 2012. The new character entered the official orthographic rules in June 2017. A prominent feature of the colonial orthography created by John Eliot (later used in the first Bible printed in the Americas,

9152-570: The number of traditional hand compositors and hot metal typesetting machine operators dropped because of the mass production of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented: "some of the world's greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world's worst fonts." Ligatures have grown in popularity in the 21st century because of an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of

9256-500: The official orthography of Standard Moroccan Amazigh , an official language of Morocco. The promotion of Neo-Tifinagh by the Berber Academy and Ammar Negadi's UPA was part of the efforts to spread Berberism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The use of Neo-Tifinagh in their publications was influential in raising Berber consciousness; one reader has described its effect as being "the proof that we actually existed." The Moroccan state arrested and imprisoned people using Neo-Tifinagh during

9360-514: The predominant orthography for literature aimed at the general public in North Africa. Some Tamazight newspapers, periodicals, and magazines are written in the Arabic script, although the Latin alphabet is preferred. The policies of some North African states have imposed the Arabic script over others suggested by Berber groups, which has been perceived as Arab colonialism replacing the prior French variety. Amazigh activists, however, eschew

9464-657: The replacement of the older "aa" with "å" became a de facto practice, an "a" with another "a" on top (aͣ) could sometimes be used, for example in Johannes Bureus 's, Runa: ABC-Boken (1611). The ⟨uo⟩ ligature ů in particular saw use in Early Modern High German , but it merged in later Germanic languages with ⟨u⟩ (e.g. MHG fuosz , ENHG fuͦß , Modern German Fuß "foot"). It survives in Czech , where it

9568-542: The same is true of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ to create ⟨st⟩ . The common ampersand , ⟨&⟩ , developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩ (spelling et , Latin for 'and') were combined. The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieratic both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as

9672-469: The script has been adapted by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture for modern digital use. Government websites in Morocco may be displayed in Neo-Tifinagh. Starting in 2003, Neo-Tifinagh was used for a small duration of Moroccan elementary school to teach Standard Moroccan Amazigh. However, practical use of Tifinagh in Morocco remains rare; one Amazigh activist has summarized the situation with

9776-475: The simple letters ⟨a⟩ , ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ . The convention in Scandinavian languages and Finnish is different: there the umlaut vowels are treated as independent letters with positions at the end of the alphabet. In Middle English, the word the (written þe ) was frequently abbreviated as a ⟨þ⟩ ( thorn ) with a small ⟨e⟩ written as

9880-551: Was an optional ligature in some specific words that had been transliterated and borrowed from Ancient Greek, for example, "Æneas". It is still found as a variant in English and French words descended or borrowed from Medieval Latin, but the trend has recently been towards printing the ⟨A⟩ and ⟨E⟩ separately. Similarly, ⟨ Œ ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ , while normally printed as ligatures in French, are replaced by component letters if technical restrictions require it. In German orthography ,

9984-404: Was archaic, obsolete, non-cursive, and impractical. Despite the criticism, Bessaoud persisted in promoting Tifinagh. "Achab Ramdane opposed my actions, calling it rekindling extinguished embers" - Said Bessaouad Efforts to Promote Tifinagh In 1970, a meeting took place to decide on a system of writing. Influenced by Mahdjoubi Ahardane, Bessaoud opted for Tifinagh. Ahardane argued that Tifinagh

10088-464: Was further strengthened by the desktop publishing revolution. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution (the automatic use of ligatures where appropriate), while most new digital typefaces did not include ligatures. As most of the early PC development was designed for the English language (which already treated ligatures as optional at best) dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as

10192-416: Was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, as they were based on handwriting. Ligatures made printing with movable type easier because one sort would replace frequent combinations of letters and also allowed more complex and interesting character designs which would otherwise collide with one another. Because of their complexity, ligatures began to fall out of use in

10296-695: Was more convenient for record keeping and transaction than the bulky long forms. Around the 9th and 10th centuries, monasteries became a fountainhead for these type of script modifications. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their writing speed by combining characters and by introducing notational abbreviations . Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes. For example, in blackletter , letters with right-facing bowls ( ⟨b⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , and ⟨p⟩ ) and those with left-facing bowls ( ⟨c⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨d⟩ , ⟨ g ⟩ and ⟨q⟩ ) were written with

10400-537: Was not marked. The writing was usually from the bottom to the top, although right-to-left, and even other orders, were also found. The letters took different forms when written vertically than when they were written horizontally. The ancient Libyco-Berber script branched into the Tuareg Tifinagh script which is used to this day to write the Berber Tuareg languages , which belong to the Berber branch of

10504-417: Was not merely a script but a testament to Berber history and identity. Further steps were taken afterwards regarding the standardization of the script. By 1973, Ammar Negadi , a prominent Chaoui writer and fervent advocate of the Tifinagh script, passionately defended the use of Tifinagh, he has been elected secretary general of the Berber Academy, now called Agraw Imazighen, in the Paris region. propagating

10608-539: Was the only valid spelling according to the official orthography in Germany and Austria. In Switzerland, the ß is omitted altogether in favour of ss. The capital version (ẞ) of the Eszett character was occasionally used since 1905/06, has been part of Unicode since 2008, and has appeared in more and more typefaces. Since the end of 2010, the Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen (StAGN) has suggested

10712-413: Was usually accompanied by alif al-wiqāyah . The vowels signs fatḥah or kasrah represent a phonemic shwa /ə/ which was lost in the post-medieval language, e.g. tuwərmin ⟨tūwarmīn⟩ ( تووَرمين ‎) “joints, articulation”. Labialization may be represented by ḍammah , e.g. tagʷərsa ⟨tāgursā⟩ ( تاكُرسا ‎) “ploughshare”. Prepositions, possessive complements and

10816-443: Was widely read by Berber communities in Algeria and Morocco. The official activities of the Berber Academy ceased when Mohand Bessaoud Arav was imprisoned. By 1980, Negadi founded his spin-off organization UPA (Amazigh People's Union), which published a bulletin in both Latin and Tifinagh, called Azaghen/Link . He remained convinced that Tifinagh was the best graphical tool to express Berber language and culture, seeing it as part of

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