Nsibidi

Update

2012-02-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

Coming Soon in May

Dec 30

2011-12-30T13:58:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Holidays. More writing. I bought a book to practice and test in. This is the picture. I'm still here.

Thanks.

Diagram

2011-12-08T15:29:00.001-08:00

Diagram

2011-12-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

First nsibidi subtitled video

2011-11-27T08:41:00.001-08:00

This is all the work of Crashdburnd of nsibidi.wikia.com

[Video is now blocked on Copyright grounds]

Random

2011-11-26T07:33:00.001-08:00

Happy Birthday

2011-11-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Sampled origins

2011-11-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

Anyị n'eje (nà uzọ)

2011-11-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

From nsibidi.wikia.com

2011-11-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

"What is mbè?"

Ikpo Nsibidi Ed.2

2011-11-10T15:35:00.001-08:00

This is the second edition of the collection of nsibidi characters. There are over 800 charatcers. This is stil a bit of a rough draft, so excuse any grammatical mistakes. To access the pdf, click the image above or copy the link below. As usual, if there are any problems just comment on this post.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/63616534/Ikpo-Nsibidi-Dictionary

Request: From God

2011-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

Shí(si) Chi Ukwu.

Abia tower

2011-11-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Before:

After:

6Nov

2011-11-06T10:48:00.001-08:00

Currently doing...

2011-11-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

Indexing over 600 characters.

5 Nov

2011-11-05T15:21:00.001-07:00

Request

2011-10-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

Time

2011-09-27T14:05:00.001-07:00

Direction

2011-09-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

Okonko in the news

2011-09-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

I have to say this here because I have no where else to, and Ọkọnkọ is linked to nsibiri anyway. Read here first: http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/sept/23/national-23-09-2011-001.html

Please be careful of how you read Nigerian papers.

Ọkọnkọ has recently entered news in Nigeria after the killing of a young man by an Ọkọnkọ member, a "cheif priest" of Ọkọnkọ from the village cluster of Umuokpara in Abia state. Some of you may not know this, but Ọkọnkọ has been part of my family for probably a few hundred years. The anglo-centric culture of modern Nigeria can be merciless to the original practices of some of our ancestors sometimes as the following news story demonstrates. The title of the news story on The Sun newspaper of Nigerias' website reads:

Bizarre! Chief priest sacrifices varsity student at cult’s altar

The actual story is that the "chief priest" committed a crime in the eyes of the Ọkọnkọ men and was asked to attend a meeting of some kind, I'm guessing that this was an initiation ceremony that takes place once in a while in Umuahia so there were some younger men there, this is a guess. Unfortunately, one of the boys fell asleep next to the 'unstable' "chief priest" and was fatally slashed on the face with a machete. The family of the young man are suspecting that it was a set-up by the Ọkọnkọ group to sacrifice the boy who was foreign to the village.

Okay.

So, nowhere in the actual news story does it say that the boy was taken to any sort of altar, or that the community are blaming Ọkọnkọ, or that this was a sacrifice? Yet the title suggests that this was a human sacrifice by a "cult", a title in Nigeria that supposed to place Ọkọnkọ with all the other ambiguous and misunderstood native societies and all the misattributed human sacrificing cases as well as Nigeria's (sometimes) occult university gangs. We don't have indication that Ọkọnkọ are known for sacrificing human beings, maybe this is because they don't, and just because a member lashed out on a unsuspecting victim doesn't mean that the whole society, or "cult", are human sacrificing demons. The youths of the community itself went on to burn the attackers house and nothing was done to the Ọkọnkọ meeting place, which is unusual as human sacrificing "cult" dens are always burnt down. Or maybe this wasn't the case because Ọkọnkọ is well established in Umuokpara, Umuahia and surround areas; maybe the community already knows what Ọkọnkọ stands for, and what it has stood for, and the fact that probably all their male ancestors before European rule were part of it, and also the fact that Ọkọnkọ is as legitimate as the Free masons in the West.

A lot of news stories coming out of Nigeria seem to lack any sort of valuable news worthy points and they hardly give the population any reliable accurate information that is unbiased and which enriches the knowledge of the population. All we get sometimes are news stories telling people what they want to hear, that a demonic cult in some village has sacrificed a young boy at an altar, without any respect to the innocent members of that society and ignoring the fact that these are respected elders who have families and lineages that know very well what their relative goes out to do at 2 am.

I have witnessed these 2 am Ọkọnkọ parades in my village, the membership of Ọkọnkọ is still very healthy and the communities they pass through seem to have no problem with them because they are from the same community. My request is that the Nigerian media should not try to throw mud at Ọkọnkọ or try and manipulate stories coming from unofficial sources to make headlines to sell stories. I would tolerate a decent headline and a mention of the families accusations, but to use the accusations as the title of the story itself is nasty.

No parking

2011-09-17T18:38:00.001-07:00

e-nyedo-lu.

Paak Avenue

2011-09-17T11:52:00.001-07:00

"Walala" is 'narrow' in some dialects, "ilo", street in some. Translate them in your dialect and it should make better sense.

Ị mẹla

2011-09-08T21:25:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all that have supported this project so far by either commenting, following the blog or liking the facebook page. You have been appreciated and I can honestly say your presence has made this project better than it would have. Ị mẹla.

Watery words

2011-09-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

I tried hard to look for the official Igbo word for 'island' that is in wide use across the Igbo speaking areas, but all I found was a sentence (which I usually find for simple object names that have disappeared from Igbo, and I know they were there because neighboring languages have these words). I found sentences for the "translation" of 'island' like 'ibe ala mmiri gbara okirikiri', and of course I saw loan words like the classic "ailan". Imagine using the former 'word' to translate an article on the island of Jamaica, It hasn't even been written and I feel frustrated just thinking about it.

So what did I do? Well okirikiri is 'circle' in many Igbo dialects, plus I had already heard about a 19th century Igbo island market (in the Niger) called kiri, kiri was also missing from the same Igbo dictionaries I failed to find 'island' in so something was telling me kiri may actually be a word for island taken from 'okirikiri'. In Kalabari, kiri means land. All this led to assigning the word kiri for island in Igbo, so from now on island in Igbo is kiri, unless someone wants to tell me otherwise. Wishful thinking.

Anyway, abadi is the orignal Igbo (and Ibani, Kalabari and Okirika 'Abaji') word for sea, ebezi was taken from Ibani seeing as I couldn't find an individual word (as in different to sea) for ocean. As Ibani shares the word for sea, it is probable that the word for ocean is similar or the same, or so I think. But of course, all this isn't set in stone, and if anybody can tell me a word they've found for these terms that are the original then please do. Until then, borrowing from neighbouring languages that Igbo already has a lot in common with (and has both influenced and been influenced by anyway) has got to be better than "ailan", no?

Omenala Marketplace

2011-09-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

I forgot to tell everyone that there is already a business that is the first to use nsibidi in it's logo. Visit the http://www.omenalamarketplace.com/ and you'll see the character for market, as well as cultural artefacts you may be interested in!

Names

2011-09-04T13:17:00.001-07:00

Rant

2011-09-04T12:20:00.001-07:00

I find it easier to read nsibiri. I find it easier to write akagu.

Igbo alphabet

2011-09-03T18:51:00.001-07:00

Akagu is an alphabet now, all the syllabic aspects of it have not stood the test of time. This is the full alphabet, minus any vowel assimilation demonstrations.

AfroScript

2011-09-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

A break from nsibidi, check out this similar writing system project that is based off of ancient African writing systems as well. I fully support a script that the whole of Africa could use (we have to be realistic and face the fact that not every single language in Africa can or is practically able to develop a script of its own). We can use this to write translations of the other scripts, like giving pronunciation guides to nsibidi for example. Anyway, check out the video. By the way, this project has nothing to do with me.

Kwụ sị

2011-09-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

Another diary

2011-09-01T17:46:00.001-07:00

This was a real challenge, not because of anything to do with language, but because of the way the characters looked. I knew from the last story i posted that there was a problem with the way the characters balanced with each other in this writing system and I had been struggling ever since. To keep it short, the characters looked squashed and were very 'pictographic' like, in a way that made it seem amateur, unlike hieroglyphs for example. The answer to problem was that I needed to keep each character in an imaginary perfect square, apart from the akagu and the curved characters. As usual, this is a paragraph repeated over to make it seem like a real letter, it says what I did today, like any normal diary. The first paragraph has taken over a day to create because of the problems mentioned. The project has passed a major hurdle.

I tried reading it; at first I thought it wouldn't work and that it would be hard to read and understand, but as I was reading I was surprised at how much easier it was than hurdling over different accent marks and spellings and trying to figure out what the writer means by akwa (yes, that word again) when there are no accent marks at all.

I'm aware that on first glance to an untrained eye that this can look a lot like hanzi (Chinese) and even other logograms and this is fine because hanzi has been a major inspiration for this project, but we should also bear in mind that nsibidi characters are very different to hanzi. It is almost impossible for nsibidi to become logographic without it having any similarities with existing logographic writing systems, especially when nsibidi and hanzi started virtually the same way and when hanzi itself has similarities with older writing systems.

Also bear in mind that this is the lightest font for nsibidi and that this is a very rough way of showing what it looks like typed, spaces and all. Very large image, by the way.

Nsibiri (rough) list

2011-08-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.scribd.com/doc/63616534/Ikpo-Nsibidi-Dictionary

Here is a link to the 'Ikpo nsibidi' I talked about earlier, only this is without the rest of the document which discusses the whole project. I have added English descriptions so it is now possible to search the document. Pass on the link if you can. There are now over 590 neo-nsibidi characters. Remember that this is a rough draft. Tell me if you see any repetition of glyphs.

Ọwụwa Ụwa Òzọ - Anaéto abụzíala nkwákpụ

2011-08-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Nà sinema nà ubọchi tosde ogost 11

Harmony - Ndákọlitá

2011-08-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

Agglutination, harmony, and assimilation of vowels.

Igbo, a Kwa language spoken in Nigeria, has a constraint prohibiting two different vowels from being adjacent to one another. In order to avoid having violations of this constraint at the surface level, assimilation of the first vowel to the second often takes place. Although many people have studied the language and noted this process, no one has provided a satisfying explanation for the fact that there is variation in this assimilation process. That is, assimilation occurs usually, but not always. A native speaker's intuition is that it depends on the rate of speech and whether or not there is a pause between the words. Although this may account for some of the variation, it certainly does not explain it all.

Nagy 1992

Is there a specific word for this?

Akagu fonts

2011-08-25T16:25:00.001-07:00

Click for bigger picture, it looks better.

A time waster while I try and complete this first PDF release of "neo"-nsibidi characters. What do you honestly think (although I probably shouldn't hold my breath for a reply)?

Generic names

2011-08-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

Aug 13

2011-08-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

11 Aug

2011-08-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

Almost 600 completed. Posts from now on will contain images of nsibidi|akagu writing.

Diary Aug

2011-08-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

Just to keep you updated (and just to keep the juices flowing) I wrote another paragraph, and this time it actually means something which means that our range of characters and words is increasing!

There are three paragraphs with a header, each paragraph is exactly the same apart from the fact that they are written in different stages. The first paragraph was a simple paragraph written neatly using characters I have not yet learnt (yes, believe it or not, I have to learn, or is it better to say memorise the very characters I've made). The second paragraph is a copy of the first paragraph meaning that I would not have to check up on characters making the writing a bit more natural; the third paragraph is done after confidence was gained in writing.

As you can see, the third paragraph looks more like 'natural' writing and would be the sort of way everyday people write (instead of the perfect angular characters we see on the blog) and it makes it a lot faster. I timed the writing, although the first paragraph was a guess. The timing is in m:s:ms.

I like doing these hand writings better because they are natural (and I don't have to spend so much time making characters in applications). You can see that hand writing is better than the story I posted not long ago done digitally.

* I also wrote the paragraph in Latin which was 1:31:01

Nsibidi story

2011-07-24T14:19:00.001-07:00

Akagu Infant book

2011-07-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

just a quick post. I always had an idea even before the creation of Akagu for a story book for kids featuring an African script. I've started one. It will be free (PDF).

Akagu PNG

2011-07-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Click for larger picture with a transparent background. To be used with foreign words. For the pronunciations using Latin, see [here].

Semnatics

2011-07-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Phono-semantic compound.

Because of the relatively high amount of homophones (words with the same sounds but different meanings, like nà 'and' or 'in'), written Igbo can sometimes be confusing. The 'walled' particle can be used to differentiate words that have the same phonemes, and can also help lessen the amount of different symbols a person has to learn. Here nà, 'and', has been introduced before on this blog, and nà, 'in', has been entered into the walled symbol which indicates that the character inside is phonetic and the wall gives it a different meaning. The wall will be used to clear semantics in many characters, but not all the time.

Idemili

2011-07-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

Symbol for Idemili, which literally means "pillar (represented by the symbols on the side) of water (represented by the symbol in the middle)"

Mazi Onyemobi.

Nne Ani, Ala, Ali, Ajana, Ajala

2011-07-13T09:33:00.001-07:00

Symbol of Nne Ani (The Earth Mother) representing the 4 corners of the Earth. The Four market days (Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo). The female vagina through which we all enter into the world.

Thanks to Mazi Onyemobi.

Umuahia

2011-07-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

My hometown. Child in a house = household = children = úmù + Ahiá = market >

Umuahia.

I actually saw an original copy of a symbol where children were in a house which is where I got children from.

Akagu on the computer

2011-05-17T12:25:00.001-07:00

How does 'Akagu' relate to nsibidi/nsibiri?

2011-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Akagu is for words that are not found in Igbo (e.g foreign names) and for use when there is no nsibidi sign for a particular word or if the user has not learnt it/forgot it.

Example:

Remember this from the behind the nsibidi post?

Well this is a sentence made up of purely nsibidi, this includes conjunctions such as and (nà) and is (bụ). The characters for the conjunctions are sort of complicated when writing quick and they could be forgotten so they are replaced with akagu in this case, now it looks like this:

For foreign names, the Japanese name Azuka is different from the Igbo Azuka so cannot be put into nsibidi, this is one of the areas where akagu is useful:

Akagu - The hand of the Leopard | Milestone 2

2011-05-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed from the cheesy pictures that were posted showing a translation of famous products of Nigeria and famous products in Nigeria into a 'funny' nsibidi-looking script, I have created the mora (or syllabary) derived from nsibidi which. This is a suggested new script for the Igbo language, and if adjustments are made it could also be suitable for other cross river languages like Ibibio, although a new mora would probably be more suitable.

The name I chose for the script is 'akagu', it has a very simple meaning and if you read Igbo (in the horrible, evil, terrible, Latin script of course) you would know that this means 'Leopards hand'. The name was coined as a homage to the leopard societies that developed and maybe even invented nsibidi, so it's supposed to be be understood as 'the hand of the leopard', 'the writing of the leopard', or even 'the writing from the leopard people'.

The grapheme's or 'letters' aren't just direct copies of the current Igbo-Latin alphabet (Önwu), new phonemes (fancy talk for sounds) have also been added, including one that could be represented in Latin by an X! More on that later.

First, let's see what the characters look like and what their Latin equivalents are, and then we will look at how we got these characters.

You may have noticed that letter C has been knocked out. Who ever uses c in Igbo except for 'chi'? Why was left put in? The other characters are acceptably explained with the Latin script except the XI, this is typically found in the dialects around Umuahia and some other parts of the Igbo speaking area of Nigeria. An example for 'Xi' is found in the word for 'zi' (show) in a particular type of Igbo (such as Ohühü) the sond is also found in 'ezì' (pig), the sound is comparable to French 'je' but more specifically 'ji'.

Nwa, nwe, et is a commonly repeating phoneme so it has been made into characters. Ch you may remember is from the made up character for the concept of chi, this chi is differentiated because the chi is not in their 'house' (the box that surrounds it). When spelling 'chi', the 'i' in akagu is not needed as 'ch' is 'chi'. The Hā, hē, et is typically found in Abia state and in the Ika speaking region of Delta state. The hnwā, hnwē, et is typically found in Ngwa. The ñ is found in the 'ñu' ('drink').

The tones explain themselves, the high and low tone come before and after the vowels or the 'n' or 'm' respectively, the symbols for 'ạ' and 'ȧ' are representations of the nasal tones and the 'ä' is the mid nasal tone, e.g in hä (them).

There are two types of the script which can be compared to capitals and lower case. The first kind is the 'normal' script (top) and it is this that is used for formal writing and for a computer unicode (typing). The second is 'Akagụ ȯsȯ' ('Fast akagu') is the less formal way of writing, maybe in a situation like at school or a letter to a friend. The main akagu is also used to write foreign words and the quick hand is used to write Igbo, which is similar to Japanese kana.

Complex characters and vowels

One of the biggest differences to the Latin script is the creation of complex characters using vowels on consonants. To make a long explanation....not long, in Igbo we know that some vowels are dropped when a sentence is made with a word ending in a vowel and a next character starting with a vowel (I can't be bothered to do fancy words), a sentence like 'Ọ gà na írú' ('progression'), has become a word in Igbo but the current writing system is so inconsistent, and the lack of management for Igbo is so little that it can be written anyhow, anyway, short story, short story. Another way of writing it would be 'Ọganíru', notice how the a from 'na' has been dropped? In akagu the 'a' is written in the quick hand form and then placed at the top right of the consonant before it, the superior vowel (in this case 'i') is written normally and the spaces are removed from the two words. Why do this? Sometimes when Igbo words are joined together in Latin, the original meaning is hard to decipher especially when most people who write Igbo leave accents off certain words, e.g n'ime is 'na ime' (inside) and could be read also as 'na ímé' ('to do...'). In akagu the vowel that would have been left out is added to a consonant almost as an accent, more appropriately a complex character that's similar to a ligature. This preserves the whole original word from the complex character to the beginning of the word, and also signals to the reader to add an extra stretch or to add that little sound that indicates a vowel skipped. The only way I can explain is in an English name like Michael, you almost say My-kel, but you say My-kol because of that 'a', well depending on you English accent, but you should have a rough understanding of what I mean.

In the picture below, the vowels that makes up the complex characters are circled in red. Try and see if you can read it, it may seem a bit awkward at first, but what doesn't?!

I understand that the writing system will have to be explained orally for better understanding.

Origins

This post is long enough so this is the origins of the script condensed:
The characters were taken from original nsibidi characters and then simplified by writing the nsibidi characters over and over again in a style that mimicks shorthand or everyday use.

The characters produced from this shorthand use is then assigned to a phoneme (sound) that is similar to the first used in the nsibidi it was derived from, e.g the 's' phoneme was from 'osisi' ('tree or wood', the 'o' phoneme was from 'ogbakọ' (meeting), et.

The quick hand nsibidi were the first created. They didn't look formal or nsibidi-like enough so some were simplified further and they were all given bars at their ends, similar to many nsibidi characters.

And that was it.

Below is a comparison of the akagu script to the nsibidi characters they were derived from. Some of the nsibidi characters were forged (or merged) here on this blog, some of them were simplified, some are completely original, some are not nsibidi characters but motifs.

This is Akagu, a proposed Igbo script. As you may have seen, akagu can be put into different weights, sizes, cases and more. It is dynamic and also unique. One of the disadvantages it has to Latin is that it cannot be recognised as easily as Latin in the lowest text size possible, apart from that I'll let the readers (and the people who may be manipulating it one day) decide. There are probably many errors and this post is very long, so I'll end it here. More updates will be coming for nsibidi and akagu later, in the meantime your feedback would be appreciated.

Numbers

2011-04-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

The nsibidi signs for numbers are from the representations of the amount of certain objects, the most common of these objects were rods, which were used as money in the days before European contact. The '5' was from an early source for nsibidi, as many of you probably know, this is a common way of writing down numbers amongst most world cultures. To differentiate numbers from rods, the bars at the end of the lines were removed. The characters pretty much explain themselves.

EDIT: Everyday numbers will be in Hindu Arabic script. 1234567890. The numbers posted here are just for special occasions and to preserve the original numbers.

Simples

2011-04-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

A simplifying process, these are where original nsibidi that may be too complicated or decorative are cut down to the lowest form. These examples show how sun and moon were simplified. The original nsibidi are indicated with an asterisk on the left and the evolution progresses right.

Previews (April 2011)

2011-04-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Date formatting. This is year (afor) from 'moon' and 'land'.

A date format in nsibidi and the Latin alphabet. The time it took to write both are noted in seconds.

Below

Snippet sneak previews (wow) of the syllabary to come. These are derived from nsibidi as well.

Behind the nsibidi

2011-04-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

Some of these notes are where I take existing nsibidi (the original ones) and try and make a new character with them. There's a lot of testing which is done to check the aesthetics as well as usability (on a daily basis) of each compound. I also simplify nsibidi this way, those that are too elaborate to use in writing (such as 'hawk'). The nsibidi are taken from a variety of geographical locations as well as cultures.

In the papers, there are some hints of the development of an nsibidi derived syllabary as well.

The main reason for the 'sentences' are to simply see if they look nice, and to also see the balance, consistency and relationship of the characters.

Although the sentence is gibberish, I think the title looks very balanced and consistent. Some of the characters were rushed in order to create a sentence and may change. Tell me what you think.

Also notice the date formatting, more on that later.

The angle was a test to see if this would work better as a 'full stop', but the circle seems to serve the writing system better.

The top character is 'love'. I think this is one of the characters that are universal amongst nsibidi-literate cultures around the Cross River and was public (used by everyone).

A fake paragraph done with repeating a gibberish sentence. Maybe from the nsibidi already suggested on this website you can decipher what it says.

Some rejected simplifications and compounds, this happens a lot and slows down the process. The nsibidi with asterisks beside them are old 100% original nsibidi. The one with the */2 is half original, as in it represents a man originally carrying money (okpogho), but I added a 'house' around him, bank.

Igbo

2011-04-08T11:12:00.001-07:00

Update (22 March 2011)

2011-03-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

There will be a brief gap between posting. I will come back with some new characters, and possibly a mock-letter in the script. Till next post.

Edit: This gap may be longer than expected.

New 'Mission' page

2011-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

Make sure to check out the new 'Mission' page, with details on where we are going with this project.

Till next post.

Chí

2011-03-17T19:37:00.001-07:00

Middle + Fire/energy + Top + Land/Life = Chí

Note - 18 March 2011:
I understand that 'Chí' is a very abstract concept in Igbo culture (among many things), and this character was created to capture the basic "idea" of Chi. Many concepts in Igbo culture may not be able to be explained with words. The characters that will be created do not intend to add any meaning to the concepts, but to create a character that is, in a basic form, relevant to the concept as has been done with old nsibidi. Nsibidi characters used to import words into nsibidi writing will not attempt to explain the complete purpose of the concept it represents, but, instead, to roughly rationalise its use as a representative of that word. A circle with strokes around it will not explain the role of the sun in photosynthesis. Thanks for bringing this to my attention so I could explain.

All roads truly lead to Egypt

2011-03-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

From 'General History of Africa: Methodology and African prehistory', (1981) University of California Press.

And on a different note, I now have more nsibidi.

Update (March 2011) Pt.2

2011-03-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

And I also want to say that I may post some nsibidi radicals soon.

This blog isn't just for nsibidi's use in the Igbo language, it also includes other languages that used its old form. I only use Igbo as it is the main focus of the project and the language I know best. There are other things I haven't revealed about the project yet, but I'll leave that till when we're at a certain level of stability.

Update (March 2011)

2011-03-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'm gradually building up logographic nsibidi characters so that I can have a demonstration of a letter completely written in the character. I'm nearly there, but there are a few things I must check before I move along.

I noticed that the character for 'díke' got a lot of attention (well, relative to this blogs age and status) so I may steer the letter towards something relating to them. I will also try and create more place names. I've been thinking for a while of doing simple names, but I think I'll try and tackle the hurdle of creating a simple letter first before I think the direction I'm going in is the right one.

I know this is very young, and there are only a few eyes on this project now, but I hope you can get more involved in it by commenting either here or on the facebook page; you can give suggestions, or you could even send an nsibidi character to this blog that you've made logographic from the sources I posted. I will accept if you post on the facebook page.

See you in the next post.

Character Sheet 2

2011-03-17T12:30:00.001-07:00

I will be uploading more and more of these character sheets.

Enugu

2011-03-15T13:09:00.001-07:00

I looked for nsibidi for "above/top" and "hill" and could not find any. I decided that from previous radicals in nsibidi, that the simple 'I' shaped radical could be used to depict a hill or a mountain and from these I forged these two characters meaning 'top' and 'hill'. These characters may change if I find out there are characters for 'hill' and 'top/above'.

The Vision

2011-03-12T18:55:00.001-08:00

Click image for a higher resolution.

You can steal my characters, but don't steal my wonderful, brilliant, and sanctimonious idea for a restaurants name!

EDIT: "Ụlọ Nni" has been changed simply to 'nni'.

Legacy

2011-03-12T07:30:00.000-08:00

The Ekoi were probably among the first of the races, so formed, to split off from the parent stem, and seem to have come straight from the lower end of the Nile valley. There are many points about the Nsibidi writing, which recall traces of the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphics.

— Percy Amaury Talbot, 1912.

Restaurant

2011-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

The characters that make up this nsibidi have been posted before. This includes house, woman, fireplace (or tripod stove) and a knife. 'Eating house', 'restaurant'.

Character Sheet 1

2011-03-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

Many of the characters I have created so far will change as I try to simplify nsibidi (most won't change). Apart from this, the following will probably no change.

Break down
'Market' - The character on the left (a straight line with a bar on top and on the bottom) is a very common nsibidi radical. Depending on the context it can mean anything from human to a pillar. In this context it is one of its other uses, this time a house. The character on the left is the old nsibidi sign for 'trade' probably used frequently in public. Together it is understood as 'trade house', 'market'.

'Entrance' - The top character is the old nsibidi for 'door', the bottom character is a woman or just a general person. The compound character (njíkọ) is understood as 'door of people', 'entrance'.

'Beauty' - The old characters for 'woman' (big left-facing curve) and 'mirror' together make 'beauty'.

'Chief' - Old character for a chief.

'Feather' - Old character for feather.

'House' - The straight line with bars can be a house in nsibidi writing, so can a square or an oval.

'Leopard' - From nsibidi motifs representing the leopard.

'Water' - From water depicted in nsibidi documents.

All derived from 20th century sources.

Requests

2011-03-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

I have received around two request so far to transcribe certain words into nsibidi, if you want anything transcribed you can comment here or go to the facebook page linked to the right.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I am thinking of doing place names, but I'm not sure I have 'cultivated' enough characters to do this (e.g 'Enu' 'ugwu', 'up' character and 'hill/mountain' character). I don't think it matters much because I can make them as I go, but it takes a lot of time to create characters like in the method this blog has taken because the original nsibidi characters are followed as closely as they can to keep their originality and "authenticity".

In other news, I have started to collect the common radicals of nsibidi, the most popular would be the arcs with the short lines at the end. This will make allow for an easier creation of characters and will also give them consistency.

Nsibidi is actually a good writing system to help solve the problem of Igbo intelligibility. With logographic characters (this blog is making ideographic nsibidi characters into logograms), the word does not have to be specific to a dialect. If the character for 'up' is created (or found), then no matter what Igboid language you speak, it would be able to be understood by all, e.g Enu, elu, etc. Of course this just covers literature and writing.

Warrior

2011-03-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

"Watchman/guard" + "Sword/Matchet".

Monday

2011-03-07T05:18:00.000-08:00

I haven't visited this blog in a long time and I just want to post so that people will know I have not abandoned this project. Anybody who has any questions can post them in the comments or on the Facebook page. I will update with new compound nsibiri and updated signs soon.

Nsibiri conjunctions 2

2011-02-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

Generally used question and path symbols in these. I will update later.

Facebook Question

2011-01-31T17:32:00.000-08:00

From: Mazi

"What motivated you to start this?"

Well I was pretty surprised and excited that there was a writing system that existed right in the Equatorial forest somewhere (no matter in what development stage).

First of all, let me say that I jumped into writing systems first through Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana scripts of the Chinese/Japanese, with emphasis on Kanji which is used by both countries. I always though 'it would have been great if the Igbo/Efik/Ibibio etc ever invented a script they used in writing'. Kanji in particular is logographic which really just means that they are picture signs (Don't worry, there's a point to this). Well I can't say that I did not know of Nsibidi before my interest in Kanji, but many sources (both 'formal' and 'informal') had left an impression in my mind that Nsibidi were just random patterns (of course this can also be due to my lack of understanding then of how different writing systems work). Kanji helped me a lot in understanding the difference between an Alphabet and a writing system (it is a very common mistake to mix the two). Before Kanji and further interest in writing, I did not know that there were Abugida and logographic writing systems (although I'd seen them).

Where does this lead? Well with the little more knowledge I had of writing I became interested in Nsibidi again and through some searching I found some very old sources that documented the Nsibidi themselves, the meaning of the Nsibidi, and most importantly for me then, the uses of Nsibidi. Nsibidi was used to record court dates, that was what set it off for me. 'Nsibidi can be used everyday like Kanji is', 'Like Katakana and Hiragana, which are syllabary off-shoots of Kanji through short-notes, Nsibidi can develop some syllabary that would ensure that a person can write without thousands of Nsibidi characters, or the Roman script, but will still be preserving a legacy with every stroke'.

The last motivation (and probably the paramount one) is that with a writing script that has been proven to be thousands of years old, the Igbo language (as well as the Ibibio language and other related languages) would firmly place itself in the world making sure that at least a bit more people learn these languages. The children may also start to appreciate their languages a bit more, maybe when they see their native script on a shirt or even a billboard they'd pay attention to their native language!

Sources of the Nsibiri

2011-01-31T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is a link to a source of Nsibiri.¹ These early missionaries² and surveyors went through a lot of years living with the "natives" to gain their trust enough for them to have the 'secrets' of Nsibidi revealed to them. There are over 300 Nsibidi recorded, although most of them are too decorative to be used in a daily logographic writing system.

Welcome to the new people who have supported this, I hope you will take a more active role now that these sources are released.

I will be creating more conjunctions in the near future, so don't think this is dead.

¹ If this is your first time seeing this source wholly, it would be nice if you credit this blog when using it on another blog. Ùdo dírí únù.

² Beware of evasive language when the Edwardian authors discuss sexual matters!

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2843186

These aren't all the sources, but this is the most important one (contains most information, lots of Nsibidi, and covers Nsibidi from previous sources).

To download the file click 'View PDF' in the tool box on the top right of the page.

Nsibiri conjunctions

2010-12-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

Some conjunctions in Igbo and English.

'And' has already been explained.

'Or' is made out of Nsibiri 'talk' (top), 'question' (bottom left) and 'unity' (bottom right). So it is interpreted literally as 'Speech question unity', e.g 'Decision conjunction'.

'But' is made out of Nsibiri 'talk' (top), 'fight' (bottom left) and 'unity' (bottom right). Interpreted as 'Talk fight unity', e.g 'Conflict conjunction'.

'So' is made out of Nsibiri 'support stick' (e.g fall, left), 'talk' and 'unity'. 'Fall/Drop/Come out (from Igbo fùtàrà) talk unity', e.g 'Conclusion conjunction'.

'For/Because' is made out of Nsibiri 'talk', 'path/journey' (middle) and unity. 'Talk journey unity', 'The point, the mission conjunction'.

Nsibiri for Nsibiri

2010-12-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

This is the Nsibiri character for 'Nsibiri' from early 20th century sources.