Mandombe
Encyclopedia
The word 'Mandombe' in the Mandombe script.
Mandombe or Mandombé, is a revealed
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
script invented in 1978 by Wabeladio Payi in Mbanza-Ngungu
Mbanza-Ngungu
Mbanza-Ngungu, formerly known as Thysville or Thysstad, named after Albert Thys, is a city in Bas-Congo Province in the western part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, lying on a short branch off the Matadi-Kinshasa Railway...
in the Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo is one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the only province with a coastline and it borders Bandundu province to the east and Kinshasa to the northeast...
province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
, after speaking with Simon Kimbangu
Simon Kimbangu
Simon Kimbangu was a Congolese religious leader noted as the founder of Kimbanguism...
, the prophet of the Kimbanguist Church, in a dream. It is based on the sacred shapes 5 and ㄹ, and intended for writing African languages such as the four national languages of the Congo, Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
, though it does not have enough vowels to write Lingala fully. It is believed that research into the script will result in scientific discoveries. It is taught in Kimbanguist church schools in Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also promoted by the Kimbanguist Centre de l’Ecriture Négro-Africaine (CENA). The Mandombe Academy at CENA is currently working on transcribing other African languages in the script.
No proposal has been made to encode the script in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
.
Structure
Mandombe has consonant letters and vowel letters which are combined into syllabic blocks, rather like hangulHangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
. All letters are based on a square S or 5 shape. The six vowels are distinguished by numerals added to the right of the 5-shape. The consonants fall into four 'groups', or shapes, which are distinguished by adding a short stroke to the 5-shape for three of the groups; and into four 'families', or orientations, which are distinguished by reflecting and rotating the letter shapes. The four families of consonants are attached to the same corner of the vowel, which is reflected or rotated to match the consonant, so that the consonant resides in a different corner of the syllabic block depending on its orientation. Unlike Pitman shorthand
Pitman Shorthand
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...
, which also distinguishes consonants by rotation, in Mandombe the groups and families do not form natural classes, apart from a fifth group of fricatives and affricates made by inverting one of the four basic groups. Vowel sequences and nasal vowels are created with diacritics, prenasalized consonants by prefixing n (the basic 5-shape), and consonant clusters by infix
Infix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem . It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.-Indonesian:...
ing a consonant between the two parts of the vowel (between the 5-shape and the additional strokes).
Vowels
Vowel letters are composed of two parts: the basic 5-shape of the Mandombe script plus a numeral, or—in the case of the French u vowel—by modifying the basic u vowel letter. Vowel 1 is i, vowel 2 u, vowel 3 e, vowel 4 o, and vowel 5 a.A vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
can be written individually and form a syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
on its own. In a vowel sequence or diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
, however, a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
is used for the second vowel or part of the vowel. That is, lio (two syllables) is written li plus the diacritic for o, while mwa (one syllable) is written mu plus the diacritic for a. Diacritics come at the end of the last stroke of the vowel. While there is a diacritic for u, sequences ending in u are instead generally written as two full syllables, the second being wu. This strategy is apparently also employed in some other cases rather than using diacritics.
| Latin script | Mandombe | Composition | Diacritic |
|---|---|---|---|
| i | |||
| u | ? | ||
| e | |||
| o | |||
| a |
Ü (French u) is . It has no diacritic.
Consonants groups and families
There are four basic consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
shapes. Each shape (base character) can be reflected
Reflection (mathematics)
In mathematics, a reflection is a mapping from a Euclidean space to itself that is an isometry with a hyperplane as set of fixed points; this set is called the axis or plane of reflection. The image of a figure by a reflection is its mirror image in the axis or plane of reflection...
horizontally, vertically, or both to represent a different consonant; the four consonants thus formed are considered to be a group, and consonants reflected in the same way are considered to be a family. These consonants are combined with vowels, which are similarly reflected, to create syllables.
Family 1: The consonant with the basic orientation is attached to the lower left of the vowel
Family 2: The consonant-plus-vowel is reflected both horizontally and vertically (rotated 180°)
Family 3: The consonant-plus-vowel is reflected horizontally
Family 4: The consonant-plus-vowel is reflected vertically
Vowel diacritics are reflected along with the main vowel.
The use of geometric transformation is also present in Pitman shorthand and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
, though Mandombe consonants in the same group do not seem to have any phonological relationship (except the fifth group named mazita ma zindinga, in which all consonants are affricates and fricatives).
Examples
| Consonant | Family 1 | Family 2 | Family 3 | Family 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Group 1 |
na |
va |
sa |
ta |
Group 2 |
be |
de |
fe |
ge |
Group 3 |
ko |
mo |
lo |
po |
Group 4 |
wi |
ri |
zi |
yi |
| Mazita ma zindinga | shu |
dju |
tshu |
ju |
Complex Characters
- Prenasalisation of consonants is indicated with a variation on (n) disconnected from the vowel. This always joins the consonant body, else certain signs could be read in more than one way.
- Nasalisation of the vowel is marked by an attached diacritic: .
- If is placed between the two separable parts of the vowel glyph, it represents an intervening /r/.
Examples of Complex Syllables
| Modification | Mandombe | Latin script |
|---|---|---|
| Vowel sequence | bie | |
| Diphthong/semivowel | mwa | |
| Nasal vowel or final nasal consonant | ken | |
| Prenasalized consonant | mbu | |
| Consonant clusters | pro | |
| plo |
Digits
The digit for 1 resembles the Hindu-Arabic 1, and 2–5 are based on this shape. 6 and 9 are square versions of Hindu-Arabic 6 and 9, and 7–8 are formed by reflecting them.| digit | mandombe |
|---|---|
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 |
Punctuation
A period is used as a word divider to separate words.The punctuation corresponds to that of the Roman alphabet. A comma has the form of a short line, ı, a period as a turned vee, ʌ, like the diacritic for o, and a colon and semicolon combinations of these (semicolon î, colon double ʌ). The exclamation mark is like a lambda, λ, and the question mark is
See also
- SyllabarySyllabaryA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
- Africa AlphabetAfrica AlphabetThe Africa Alphabet was developed in 1928 under the lead of Diedrich Westermann. He developed it with a group of Africanists at the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in London...
, African Reference AlphabetAfrican reference alphabetAn African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982... - N'KoN'KoN'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages....
alphabet - KimbanguismKimbanguismKimbanguism is a branch of Christianity founded by Simon Kimbangu in what was then the Belgian Congo . The church's name is the Kimbanguist Church , and is a large, independent African Initiated...
External links
- CENA (in French)
- Mandombe script