Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika [Hardcover]

Saki Mafundikwa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2006

Afrikan alphabets have a rich cultural and artistic history. Many continue to be in current use today. Their story, however, is little known due largely to their past suppression by colonial powers. This book sets the record straight. Both entertaining and anecdotal, African Alphabets presents a wealth of highly graphical and attractive illustrations. Writing systems across the Afrikan continent and the Diaspora are included, analyzed and illustrated: the scripts of the West Africans - Mende, Vai, Nsibidi, Bamum and the Somali, and Ethiopian scripts. Other alphabets, syllabaries, paintings, pictographs, ideographs, and symbols are compared and contrasted. This informative and beautiful book will be of interest to anyone fascinated with African cultural and art.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Saki Mafundikwa is a graphic designer, typographer and teacher. He holds an MFA from Yale University and has worked and taught in New York City. Returning to Zimbabwe, he founded the country's first graphic design and new media college, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. The college opened in 1999 and continues to operate under extremely difficult conditions as the country goes through its most challenging era since independence.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mark Batty Publisher; First Edition edition (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972424067
• ISBN-13: 978-0972424066
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 8.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,338,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of the history of indigenous African scripts, but incomplete., July 9, 2006

By 

The Djeli (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika (Hardcover)

This book is fantastic in covering the history of indigenous African scripts, a subject many are unaware of. However, the author should have begun by discussing the beginning of African writing which took place in Ancient Kemet (Egypt). He did not discuss it at all. Perhaps one could claim that it is because the script is no longer in use, but then why did the author discuss some contemporary scripts that are not in use? The only other reason I could think of is because Egypt is already so well known and he wanted to focus on the Sub-Saharan groups that are more disregarded. Fair enough, but then the author should have discussed the Meroitic script of the ancient Nubians of Kush and noted the lack of global interest in deciphering this ancient alphabet.

Otherwise, the book is fantastic and the Zimbabwean author a blessing to the global community of people of African descent. His understanding of the unity of our people is unsurpassed and refreshing in light of the separatism we are taught to practice among ourselves.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating linguistic history, September 18, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika (Hardcover)

Afrikan Alphabets: The Story Of Writing In Afrika is the impressive result of author Saki Mafundikwa's 20-year effort to collect information on writing systems throughout Africa. Pictographs, mnemonic devices, syllabaries and alphabets are all graphically presented with pronounciation guides, and color photographs of people, art and documents, and brief essays concering the histories of various writing scripts. A superb reference guide and a fascinating linguistic history.

3.0 out of 5 stars good and timely survey vitiated by errors and slanted approach, January 31, 2012

By 

Mark Newbrook (Heswall, Wirral, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Afrikan Alphabets (Paperback)

This book provides a very interesting survey of an area often neglected in discussions of writing systems; indeed, as the author and the preface-writer Tadadjeu indicate, it is often assumed (though not by linguists) that African languages were seldom written before the introduction of alphabets (mainly by European colonisers) in modern times. The material covers the origins and characteristics of a wide range of scripts used to write various African languages.

The main problem with the book involves a considerable element of `Afrocentrism': the recent tendency (especially in the USA and elsewhere in the African diaspora) to exaggerate the role of Africa in world culture, by way of reaction to the previous, often racist down-playing of Africa's contributions to history and intellectual life (and to institutions such as slavery). Examples are the ready acceptance of Bekerie's extreme and often dubious claims about the Ethiopic `abugida' (intermediate between an alphabet and a syllabary), and the seriously exaggerated claims made for the Cameroonian Shu-Mom system (made especially strongly in the preface). Afrocentric pseudo-historical works are cited without any acknowledgment of their highly marginal status. Quasi-mystical notions involving `harmony' and spirituality are foregrounded in places.

There are also some oddities, commencing with the decision to spell the words Africa and African with K rather than C, on the ground that K is the letter normally used for the sound in question in Africa itself. The C-K contrast arises only in the context of the modern use of the roman alphabet, where either letter would serve. The Romans used the form with C because this was how they transliterated all Greek loans which had kappa (K) in the original. Furthermore, and more seriously, the scripts covered include various non-alphabetic systems (syllabaries, the Ethiopic abugida, etc); the title is thus misleading (possibly because alphabet is much the best known of these terms among non-linguists). In addition, some of the systems discussed are not true scripts but are instead semiotic systems not representing specific languages or their words, or even simply art or at best matters of graphic design. This may involve the desire to suggest that pre-modern African societies were more literate than was in fact the case (another manifestation of Afrocentrism). And in more general terms the level of linguistic expertise leaves something to be desired. For instance, the notions of ideograph and logograph are confused, and the comments about the ultimate origins of writing are rather naive and inaccurate.

In sum: while the book is informative on a little-known topic, it must be read with various caveats in mind.