<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 20 May 2009 - Volume 02<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</a></span><br>===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: Orthography</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Dear Lowlanders,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Yesterday I shared my "tweak" of a sentence in Cape Malay Afrikaans of 1977 taken from a blog report (<a href="http://dawudlindewei.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/arabic-afrikaans/" target="_blank">http://dawudlindewei.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/arabic-afrikaans/</a>). Please see a repeat farther below.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Here are some more comments:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><ul style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<li>One of the theses of the article was that most of the Cape Malays that had themselves been moved to South Africa had been at least exposed to Dutch in what is now Indonesia, that their transition to Afrikaans must have been relatively easy.<br>
<br></li><li>I do not believe that Cape Malays plucked the Arabic script system for Afrikaans out of thin air. Before they left Southeast Asia, the Arabic script had already been used to write some local Malayic languages, including Malay proper. Using Arabic letters to represent non-Semitic languages was therefore not new to most of them, and the step to using it for Afrikaans must have seemed a fairly small one.<br>
<br></li><li>When we compare the system for Afrikaans with that (<i>Jawi</i>) used for Malay today we notice that it is more complex in that it seeks to represent all vowels and absences of vowels by means of diacritics in the way it is done in Qur'anic Arabic. Today's <i>Jawi</i> system for Malay represents short vowels less consistently, absence of vowels not at all. In fact, it uses no diacritics t all. What the two systems share, however, is the use of the Araboxenic letter <i>eng</i> (<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crhahn%5CLocal%20Settings%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>
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</style>ڠ), an <i>`ayn</i> (ع) with a triple-dot on top.<br>Malay: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/malay-jawi.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/malay-jawi.php</a>, <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/malay-info.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/malay-info.php</a><br>
<br></li><li>The system used for Afrikaans most resembles that used for Tausug, a Malayic language primarily used on the southernmost Philippine islands, also in some colonies in Sabah, a Malaysian part of Borneo. Not only is the vowel punctuation practically identical, but so is the use of the diacritical <i>sukun</i> (circle) to indicate absence of a vowel.<br>
Tausug: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tausug-info.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tausug-info.php</a>, <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tausug-jawi.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tausug-jawi.php</a><br>
<br></li><li>This is not to imply that the system used for Afrikaans has been taken from that used for Tausug. I am fairly certain that the system used for Tausug represents an older one used among certain Malayic-speaking Muslims, that today's <i>Jawi</i> for Standard Malay of Malaysia is a newer, simplified variant.<br>
<br></li><li>As for the word <i>hūka</i> (هُوْكَ) for Afrikaans <i>hoge</i>, we need to bear in mind that the fricative [x] can be represented by means of the Arabic letter <i>kha</i> (خ). Furthermore, the systems for Malay and Tausug represent /g/ by means of the Araboxenic letter <i>ga</i> (ڬ), a <i>kaf</i> (ك) with a dot on top. The use of a <i>k</i> (<i>kaf</i>) for Afrikaans /g/ means either that this is how Caped Malays pronounced it or that this specific letter for /g/ was not available to them, that they were not familiar with it. I believe that the latter is more likely, because all Malayic languages have the phone [g]. In other words, I postulate that early Cape Malays pronounced Afrikaans /g/ as [g] but did not distinguish it orthographically for lack of an orthographic device to do so. Why not use the letter letter <i>kha</i> (خ) since Afrikaans /g/ is pronounced [x] in most environments? I believe the reason is that [x] is a difficult foreign sound for Malayic speakers and at least in the early days Cape Malays used the more familiar [g] instead, perhaps influenced by the Roman script spelling in Dutch and Afrikaans.<br>
<br></li><li>You may wonder about <i>bīdī</i> (بِيْدِيْ) for Afrikaans <i>by die</i>, considering that <i>y</i> represents the diphthong [əı] in Afrikaans (representing an earlier stage of the development from [i:] to today's pronunciation of Dutch <i>ij</i>). Bear in mind that the short /i/ diacritic is sometimes used to represent <i>schwa</i>. What seems to be happening here is that <i>schwa</i> and /-i/ (or rather /-j/) geminate to coincide with what in Arabic (and also in Arabic script for Afrikaans) stands for a long "i". Representation of Afrikaans <i>y</i> and <i>ie</i> are thus identical. I see this as a weakness of the system, not as an indication that <i>y</i> was pronounced [i:] at the time.<br>
</li></ul>
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Seattle, USA</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">***</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Brought to you yesterday:<br><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Arabic script:</span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
</div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<p dir="rtl" style="text-align: center; direction: rtl;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 18pt;" lang="AR-SA">ان دي كُوْنِڠْ سْكَبْ اس بِيْدِيْ هُوْكَ اﷲ تََََعٲلا ان ڤارْلِكْ
اﷲ تََََعٲلا اِس بَاس فَِرْ آلْدِي اِتْسْ</span></p>
</div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Close transliteration:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><font size="4">ʔǝn dī kūniŋ skap ʔǝs bīdī hūka ʔallāh taʕālā ʔǝn ẘārlik ʔallāh taʕālā ʔis bās fiar ʔāldī ʔits</font><br></div>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Reconstruction:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<br><font size="4">En die koningskap is by die hoka (= hoge) Allah <i>ta῾ālā</i>. En waarlik Allah <i>ta῾ālā</i> is baas vir al die iets.</font><br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<div style="text-align: right; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<i>ta῾ālā</i> 'may be be exalted'<br></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Translation:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<font style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="4">And the kingdom is with the high Allah (may he be exalted!). And verily </font><font style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="4">Allah (may he be exalted!) is master over all things.<br>
<br></font><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Observations:</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<li>Short /i/ and short /e/ are shown as indistinct, which points toward a <i>schwa</i> pronunciation as in <i>en</i> and <i>is</i>.</li><li>In <i>vir</i>,
both short /i/ and short /a/ are indicated (atypically two vowel
diacritics). I take this as an attempt at symbolizing a low central
vowel before /r/.</li><li>Long /o/ had already undergone raising to [u:], as in <i>hoge</i> = <i>hūka</i>. (Unfortunately, this brief sample does not show if raising had already been applied to long /e/.)<br></li><li>The velar fricative, spelled <i>g</i> in Afrikaans, is shown as <i>k</i>. I assume that the speaker (most likely a person from what is now Indonesia) pronounced it as [k].</li>
</ul><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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