Part10

My appeal to my fellow-Kunama, writing in the Kunama language: let us all agree to adopt a unified and a single way of spelling the Kunama words: By Pietro Ali Umet (Hummad). Part one.

It has always been my firmest conviction that the Kunama is one of the easiest, if it is not, the easiest language, in Eritrea, to spell and pronounce. It is in fact void of all the guttural vowels and consonants, characterising, for instance, the Arabic, the Tigre and the Tigrigna languages. This serves the Kunama language to adopt the Latin or the European alphabets to write all its words as well easily use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to transcribe them.

The first European missionaries in the Kunama land, both Italians and Swedish, had immediately identified how easy it was to adopt the alphabets and the phonetic symbols (signs), existing in their own respective languages, to write, read and pronounce the Kunama words and speak the Kunama language. The only differences and discrepancies in writing, reading and pronouncing the Kunama words, had their origin more in the differences and discrepancies already existing in the both languages, rather than in the Kunama language itself and therefore each one of the two communities had adopted and, not only retained but also impose those differences upon the Kunama words, which are the reasons  why we Kunama too today, are adopting and retaining those differences, depending on our different religious denominations and associations as well as different schooling backgrounds.

     With all the gratefulness to and respect for all those diligent missionaries who had given us Kunama the opportunity to decode our Kunama language in a written form and develop its literature, I believe that it is time for us Kunama to take our linguistic matters in our own hands and agree firstly to improve the basic spellings of our words and then proceed to advancing its grammar and literature.

     As a Kunama person, with a B-Ed Degree, with English language as major and with specialisation in “Linguistics and Stylistics”, I believe that I could bring my humble, but nevertheless useful contribution in finding a common way of, not only, spelling the Kunama words, but also transcribing the Kunama language, on the bases of the International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA) so as to expose the Kunama language to every person interested in learning it. So far, I have been working in eliminating, both the alphabets (letters) which are redundant in the Kunama language as well as in adopting, always based on the internationally recognised phonetic symbols, a combination of letters, to replace those symbols the two missionary communities had adopted differently to transcribe and pronounce those same Kunama words. Some of those symbols, such as  placing a “tilde” upon a vowel, apart from being restricted only within the linguistic spheres and experiences of those two different communities, they are not internationally recognised symbols, apart from practically hindering also the flow of writing of the Kunama words. In order to facilitate such writing regularity, the combination of letters existing in English, as an international language, but also easily transcribed in IPA, have been adopted also for the Kunama language. To transcribe other particular sounds of the Kunama words, identical sounds existing in the German and in the Italian languages have also been plagiarised, as these will be explained below. The purpose is not to impose a linguistic principle, but to be as much close as one can, in transcribing the sounds of the Kunama words.

  Beginning with the “Standard Alphabets of the Kunama Language”, let us state that altogether from being used in the Kunama language. Similarly the “y” too, replaced by “i” in APA transcription, is also dropped because of its redundancy. The “tilde” which is being placed upon the letter “n” to transcribe, for instance, the Kunama words: “ngada, ngeda, ngirda, ngora, ngurda” is being dropped as similar sounds of words in the IPA are transcribed with s symbol, which is the combination of  an “n” and of a “g”, resulting in an “n” with a prolonged right leg.(Please cfr., the International Phonetic Alphabet in any English dictionary).

The Kunama words like: “cha, nache, chiada, chocha chuga” are spelt and pronounced just like the English words: “challenge, butchers, children, choke, chew” and therefore the combination “ch” (in IPA a combination of “t” and “s”), is used to transcribe such Kunama words Similarly, the Kunama words: “shada, sheda, shida, shoda, shuda” are identically spelt and pronounced like the English words: “sham, shed, shit, shot, shoe” and therefore the combination “sh” (in IPA a prolonged “s”), is adopted to transcribe such Kunama words.

     The Kunama, like the Italian language, is very constant in maintaining the basic pronunciation of the vowels and consonants it uses in writing a word. This means that the doubling of the consonants in a word too, are pronounced accordingly. This is however in contrast with the German language which shortens, rather than lengthen, as in the Italian and in the Kunama languages, the sound of a word spelt with double consonants.

More examples on these and on other characteristics of the graphology and phonology of the Kunama language will be dealt with in Part two.

Pietro Ali Hummad: (January 6, 2006).