Osmanya (, ), known in Somali as ''Far Soomaali'' (, "Somali writing") and in Arabic as ''al-kitābah al-ʿuthmānīyah'' (; "Osman writing"), is an

alphabetic script An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given ...

created to transcribe the

Somali language Somali is an Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic languages, Cushitic branch, primarily spoken by the Somalis, Somali people, native to Greater Somalia. It is an official language in Somalia, Somaliland, and Ethio ...

. It was invented by

Osman Yusuf Kenadid Osman Yusuf Kenadid (; ; 1889 – 14 August 1972) was a Somalis, Somali poet, writer, teacher and ruler. Born in Ceel Huur in 1889, he went on to create the Osmanya alphabet for writing Somali language, Somali. He died on 31 August 1972 in Mogad ...

, the son of

Sultan Sultan (; ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be use ...

Yusuf Ali Kenadid Yusuf Ali Kenadid (; 1837 – 14 August 1911) was a Somali Sultan and the founder of the Sultanate of Hobyo. He was succeeded to the throne by his son Ali Yusuf Kenadid. Family Yusuf Ali Kenadid was born into the Bah Yaaqub (part of the large ...

and brother of Sultan

Ali Yusuf Kenadid Ali Yusuf Kenadid (, ; died 1927) was a Somali Sultan and the second ruler of the Sultanate of Hobyo. History Ali Yusuf was born into a Majeerteen Darod family. His father, Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid, was the founder of the Sultanate of Hob ...

of the

Sultanate of Hobyo The Sultanate of Hobyo (, ), also known as the Sultanate of Obbia,''New International Encyclopedia'', Volume 21, (Dodd, Mead: 1916), p.283. was a 19th-century Somali Sultanate in present-day northeastern and central Somalia and eastern Ethiopia ...

. Material written in the script is 'almost non-existent,' so it is difficult to describe its use with certainty.

History

While Osmanya gained reasonable acceptance for correspondence and bookkeeping at the local level, it met fierce resistance as a national script for several reasons: it was identified with the

Majeerteen The Majeerteen, (, ; also spelled Majerteen, Macherten, Majertain, or Mijurtin) alternately known as Mohammed Harti, are a Somali sub-clan part of the Harti branch of the Darod, Darod clan. Traditionally, they inhabit extensive territories in ...

clan, who supported the Italian colonial government, rather than with the Somali nation as a whole view that has changed somewhat in the 21st century there was opposition to making Somali rather than Arabic the official language of the country, and in addition there was opposition to using any indigenous script rather than either the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

, long used for writing Arabic in Somalia, or the Latin script. After independence a governmental commission was set up to decide on an official writing system for Somali. It favored

Kaddare script The Kaddare script is a poorly known alphabetic script created to transcribe the Somali language. There are no known books written in the script. History The script was invented in 1952 by a Sufi Sheikh, named Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare. The ...

, but judged it to be impractical for a developing nation. In October 1972 the

Somali Latin alphabet The Somali Latin alphabet is an official writing system in the Somalia, Federal Republic of Somalia and its constituent States and regions of Somalia, Federal Member States. It was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali_language, So ...

was adopted as the official writing system for Somali because of its simplicity, ability to cope with all of the sounds in the language, and the widespread existence of machines and typewriters designed for the Latin script.Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, ''Culture and Customs of Somalia'', (Greenwood Press: 2001), p.73 The administration of President Mohamed Siad Barre subsequently launched a massive literacy campaign designed to ensure its adoption, which led to a sharp decline in use of Osmanya.

Description

The direction of reading and writing in Osmanya is from left to right, as in Latin script. Capitalization is sporadic. Long vowels were originally written either double or with consonants, as in Arabic, but later ligatures were developed from the double vowels. The ATR/RTR distinction is not marked in vowels, except occasionally in the 21st century with a diaeresis for ATR vowels, as is occasionally done also in Latin script. The article and determiner suffixes are written separately from the noun, which retains its underlying form. Assimilation is however shown on the article/determiner itself eminine ''-ta'', masculine ''-ka'' Thus ''hooyada'' 'the mother' is written ; ''hasha'' 'the she-camel' is written . When the ''k'' of ''-ka'' elides, it is marked with an apostrophe, which was borrowed from Latin script. Thus ''dhinaca'' 'the side' is written .

Letters

The order of the alphabet is not completely fixed, as only letters that correspond to Arabic script are consistently written in that order. The letter 𐒀 ''alef'', which had been used to mark long vowels as well as glottal stop, was dropped around the time letters were added for ''aa'', ''ee'', ''oo'', and ''w'', ''y'' came to be used for ''uu'', ''ii''. The order below is -- apart from the anachronistic retention of the letter ''alef'' -- as written by the inventor's son Yaasiin, though various other orders are attested.Tosco 201
Somali writings
p 13 ''ff'' : *''alef'', which was used for both glottal stop and long ''aa'', has been dropped from the alphabet

Digits

The system is decimal: Although some of these digits may look identical to various letters, this is not true for all fonts.

Unicode

Osmanya was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0. Capitalization is not supported. The Unicode block for Osmanya is U+10480–U+104AF:

Notes

References

* I.M. Lewis (1958) ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'',

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

, Vol. 21 pp 134–156.

External links

Osmanya, Borama, Wadaad's writing and the Somali language

''Afkeenna iyo fartiisa''
- a book in Osmanya
Somali Native Alphabet

The report of the Somali Language Committee

- Lexilogos
Somali Osmaniya Transliterator
{{writing systems Writing systems of Africa Somali orthography Obsolete writing systems 1920s establishments in Somalia Somali inventions