Edited by author 07-29-2006 09:52 AM
This message board is intended for the discussion of topics related to the use of three closely related languages of Nigeria - Ibibio, Efik, and Anaang - on computers and the internet.

Its creation is prompted by a question received indirectly for help with fonts and developing keyboards for Ibibio. I have indluded Efik and Anaang as these are related and perhaps some of the work done on one or another can be shared by all.

This is one of several message boards specific to languages and countries of Africa - others are listed at http://www.quicktopic.com/share?s=QSpo . It is the fourth to deal with languages of Nigeria (there are already forums for Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo), and the first to deal with any of the so-called "millionaire" languages of the country. That is, the speakership of these languages is in the millions but not in the tens of millions like the largest three.

It is also the first message board in in this network to propose to deal with a set of closely related languages - in this case Ibibio, Efik, and Anaang. All the others deal either with specific languages individually - namely the "decamillionaire" languages of Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo - or with all languages of a given country on a country-by-country basis: Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. So it is a bit of a new experiment in that regard.

Further information on the Ibibio, Efik, and Anaang languages can be read at http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki....oc/EfikIbibioAnaang .

See also the A12n-gateway page at http://www.bisharat.net/A12N for information on other forums for communicating about African languages and ICT.

Don Osborn, Ph.D. dzo@bisharat.net
*Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative
*Bisharat! Initiative langues - technologie - développement
http://www.bisharat.net

*PanAfrican Localisation Project
*Projet panafricain sur la localisation
http://www.bisharat.net/PanAfrLoc (new domain coming)

A website on Ibibio called "My Ibibio" is at http://www.geocities.com/myibibio/index.html . It has information on the language (including writing) and culture.

Edited by author 07-29-2006 08:53 AM
Very interesting that Ibibio, Efik and Anaang is still asking for developing keyboards.

There has been a keyboard developed for all Nigerian languages, including Ibobio, Efik and Anaang, and the keyboard is on sale in Nigeria. The keyboard was approved by Nigeria's NITDA.

The keyboard is called KONYIN Nigeria Multilingual Keyboard. (http://www.konyin.com)

I think this board will be best utilized for discussing issues relating to electronic documentation of our language in the internet arena. And there is a lot of work going on in this area as referenced by Don.

My piece
George

Hi Don,

I've been doing some work on a keyboard layout with Chinedu, that will cover a range of Nigerian languages, both NFD and NFC output. Efik is in the list to support. It would be straight forward to add Ibibio and Anaag if they aren't already covered by teh character repetoire.

Are alphabet and orthography statements available for Ibibio and Anaang?

Andrew

Edited by author 08-01-2006 09:33 AM
Hi George and Andrew,

Thanks for your messages and info re keyboards.

Nigeria has probably the most activity of any country in Africa concerning keyboards and keyboard layouts. This should be no surprise considering (1) the number of languages spoken in the country, (2) the fact that they generally use letters and diacritics beyond the ASCII character set, and (3) the fact that there has been writing in some of these languages for some time.

I think we need a good overview of where where everyone is with Nigerian keyboards. George is correct that Konyin is one standard and that it has an approval by NITDA (does this latter override NITDA's previous keyboard proposal?). It is the only physical keyboard plus keyboard driver that has been developed with a layout designed specifically for multilingual Nigerian needs. That said, it is mainly designed for Windows (more on that later).

Andrew, I'd be interested to know more about what you and Chinedu are working on and how it relates to other keyboards.

The website in /m2 gives an Ibibio orthography. I have no idea if it is the accepted standard, an emerging standard, or something proposed by the website creator.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

Hi Don,

You are actually right; the KONYIN keyboard is for windows only.

I don't know if NITDA is still developing another, but that will be a waste of time, unless they are trying to improve on the KONYIN. But knowing Nigeria for what we are, they will probably be trying to do a completely different one.

The font listed on the /m2 link seems to be correct, but there is an alphabet missing, that looks like an upside down V. I cannot find any Unicode code-point for it.

George

Hi Don,

re /m5,

hopefully NITDA have dumped ther old keyboard in favour of KONYIN. It would make sense, since their keyboard layout was originally using the depreciated Vietnamese tone markers insead of the combining acute and grave characters.

Depending on what keyscan codes the KONYIN keyboard uses, it should be possible to create appropriate linux keyboard drivers to use it. Something i'll test in the future, once their african multilingual keyboard has been released.

Wrt the work Chinedu and I are doing, i'll send you a separate email since it is somewhat off topic for this forum.

Andrew

Hi Goerge,

re /m6,

do you mean the Unicode characters U+0245 and U+028C?

Andrew

Edited by author 08-01-2006 08:56 PM
Hi Andrew, /m8

That is it, that is the Unicode points I was looking for.
Some orthographies of Ibibio I have seen included the: Latin Capital Letter Turned V (U+0245) and Latin Small Letter Turned v (U+028C)

http://www.rosettaproject.org/archive/nige...reement%20Confirmed


Thanks for the information Andrew

George

Hi George,

you're welcome.

U+0245 is a new character in Unicode 5.0, so i doubt any fonts will have this character yet. Currently the Doulos SIL and Charis SIL fonts have this character as a PUA codepoint (U+F219). I'd assume that they'll update their fonts soon and move some of their PUA codepoint assignments to the new Unicode 5.0 codepoint assignments.

I'll check with Chris Harvey as well to see if its a likely addition to his fonts.

George, do you have a full alphabet statement for Ibibio?

Andrew

Edited by author 08-02-2006 09:12 AM
Hi Andrew,

Below is my best collection of the alphabets, do note that some people use the diaeresis instead of the sub-dot.

Aa Ạạ Bb Dd Ee (U+018E, U+01DD) Ff GHgh (U+1E22, U+1E23) Ii Ịị Kk KPkp Mm Nn NYny (U+014A, U+014B) (U+014A,W, U+014B,w) Oo Ọọ (U+0245, U+028C) Pp Ss Tt Uu Ụụ Ww Yy

Andrew, you can use the Greek capital letter LAMDA (U+039B) for the Latin capital letter Turned V. The latin small letter Turned v is available in Arial Unicode MS

George

Edited by author 08-02-2006 10:58 AM
Hi George, Here's a quick attempt to understand the alphabet / character set for Ibibio.

According to what I see on the Ibibio website mentioned in /m2, specifically on page http://www.geocities.com/myibibio/dictionary/alphabets.html the alphabet including digraphs (2 letter pairs) is:

Aa Ää Bb Dd Ee Ëë Ff Gg GHgh Hh Ii Ïï Kk KPkp KWkw Mm Nn Ŋŋ ŊWŋw ŊYŋy Oo Ọọ Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Üü Ww Yy

... and my understanding of what you posted in /m11 is:

Aa Ạạ Bb Dd Ee Ǝǝ Ff GHgh Ḣḣ Ii Ịị Kk KPkp Mm Nn NYny Ŋŋ ŊWŋw Oo Ọọ Λʌ Pp Ss Tt Uu Ụụ Ww Yy

I suspect the My Ibibio site may have intended "ny" as you have, rather than "ŋy", but that's just a supposition.

Other than that the observations, differences and questions I note are:

1. Choice between subdot and diaresis for the special a, i and u (maybe o too? the "My Ibibio" page uses the subdot like in your example)
2. Choice between e-diaresis or turned-e for the special e
3. "My Ibibio" shows a plain g but you do not
4. You have an acute accent on the h but no plain h; "My Ibibio" has the reverse. Are there 2 "h" sounds in Ibibio?
5. You have the turned-v (I used capital lambda for the display) but My Ibibio does not. Is this used for a particular "l" sound?
6. Neither of you have c (English "ch" sound), j, l, q, v, x or z
   

This is just an attempt to get a clearer picture of what appear to be two alternate transcriptions. Thanks in advance for any further clarification.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

(NB- I set the font face to facilitate display of the alphabets, but put "Gentium" as the first in the list. If you need that font it can be downloaded for free at: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.ph...id=Gentium_download )

Hi George,

Using Latin Capital Letter Turned V rather then Greek capital Lambda would be preferred. Casing will be an issue. Much simplier to keep things in the same script. When appropraite fonts become available, it would be straight forward to create a short mapping file using TECKit or similar to convert teh Greek Lambda to a Latin Turned V.

I'll let everyone know when I fear back about font updates.

Edited by author 08-02-2006 09:21 PM
Hi Don & Andrew,

Great collection of information and knowledge.

Don's questions:
To the best of my knowledge almost all the orthographies of native languages in southern Nigeria were developed using the sub-dot. But recently some people have been using the diaeresis because all the system default fonts do not have the sub-dot. From my research the alphabets I listed flows with other native languages in the area.

Andrew:
I agree that using the LAMBDA is not the ideal thing, but I guess until we have Latin script fonts with the right Unicode codepoint, we have to make do with that for now.

George

Hello George and Don,
Andrew brought the new forum to my awareness. So I am actually jumping into an ongoing discussion.

I would only add that the effort in Nigeria has been towards the use of sub-dotted vowels for the Nigerian languages, whether Igbo, Yoruba, Efik etc. The non-availablility of these characters on the older versions of the windows operating system (which thousands of people are still using in Nigeria today), has led to different people not only trying out, but also using, whatever character they could find in their computer. Echeruo did this with the Igbo orthography and started using umlauted vowels instead of the sub-dotted ones. The same applies to what George calls diaeresis. Such an approach is simply adapting one's language to the computer technology, instead of adapting the technology to serve one's language.

As a matter of principle, I stick to the recognized orthography. I think that's the best approach to improving on what is already available.

All the best,
Chinedu Uchechukwu

Edited by author 08-16-2006 10:23 AM
George and Chinedu, the use of dieresis is very simple. Let me explain ...

There are very few physical computer keyboards out there that can be used for typing Nigerian autography today. What you see with dieresis and alike are nothing more than best efforts by some PHD students and Dr's to re-invent the wheel. So far there are different camps of Linguist out tere that seem to support anything weired. Also the ones that have some sanity keep the autography as it is and not try to adhoc it.

Linguists should stick to what they do and not try to be computer gurus overnight. Great effort but laughable at best.

As impressive as it is that there trying to put a square peg into a round hole. We want to write our languages by any means necessary!. Well I have news for the wheel inventors; http://www.konyin.com

The old computers can try all they want but they need to get their
1. computers updated to UNICODE compliant OS. example windows 2000 and up.
2. Also the applications need to be UNICODE compliant.
3. Fonts that can RENDER the glyphs for Nigerian characters; Ariel MS Unicode. Gentium, http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.ph...id=Gentium_download
4. Get a keyboard that can type in your language. www.konyin.com is one of them.

Stop wasting time with ; stickers and crap like these below.
Aa Ạạ Bb Dd Ee (U+018E, U+01DD) Ff GHgh (U+1E22, U+1E23) Ii Ịị Kk KPkp Mm Nn NYny (U+014A, U+014B) (U+014A,W, U+014B,w) Oo Ọọ (U+0245, U+028C) Pp

Stop doing ALT + Unicode numbers..

YES I was guilty of the above gymnastics also.
Lastly stop da grama ! .. na wa o!

Konyin keyboard its a complete and comprehensive physical keyboard that allows us to type naturally any Nigerian language. I havent seen any other one like it but hope there will be competition for the keyboard also. Wide appeal and useage.

In my own mind, its still better than using insert or copy and paste. I think the stone ages are long gone !..

BTW I know we Nigerians love to blow grammar too much. Just stop the crap and use any physical keyboard that can type your language. I have the KOòNYIN keyboard and its great. No grammar just simply write.

See what NITDA said about the product after 25 years of best efforts; virtual keyboards for Hausa, Igbo and YoruÌbaì. I guess other languages don’t exist in Nigeria from the point of view of NITDA's best effort.

For me the pain is gone. I can now type in my native language. Yes my papa sabi di tin i write now. My peoples na wa for una! buy only keyboards that you can type your language with. Stop blowing grammar ! Abi keò; gini!

Did i mention that I can now type Naira in Excel file and do summation .. yipeee. No more =N= lol

I know say dem peoples that created the keyboard na Yorubas but its working. We dont have to wait for a white man to give us a keyboard. If to say na white man created this keyboard, I know say non of una go de talk gramar anymore. U go say dem white man don do di tin. Make we go line up and buy am.

But cos na Nija created the keyboard, some of us dey drag our feet to support fellow Naija. Shame on to us.

see wetin Professor Angaye [NITDA chairman said about the keyboard]
http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=...1&L=ilat&T=0&P=7873 [jan 23 2006]
http://www.i4donline.net/march06/march06.pdf [page 23/43]

Ike.
Peace my brothers and sisters.

I am not sure Ike's ranting is helpful to the topic at hand.
I can understand his love affair with the konyin keyboard, but there is more to our languages than simple keyboard.

Ike, konyin keyboard does not have the turned V on its keyboard, do you know if this is an error?

By the way, is Ibibio and Anaang not actually a dialect of Efik?
Can anyone give me a direction on this?

George

Just a couple of points:

re /m17 and /m16

1) input software is the best approach, either with or without a physical keyboard.

2) Konyin does not support the Capital Turned V. This character is new in the recently released Unicode 5.0. For Konyin to support it, they'd have to create a new version of their Nigerian keyboard and new versions of the keyboard driver. It is the one problem with the physical keyboard approach. It locks Konyin into sopporting specific languages and isn't easy to support additional languages outside the character repetoire the keyboard supports.

New characters are still being added to Unicode to support Africa minority languages. Capital Turned V is one example. Not Koyin's fault, nor an error on their part.

Given the alphabet for Ibibio in /m11 a couple of observations of the Konyin keyboard layout wrt Ibibio:

Most letters are assigned to a separate key. Four letters would require typing a base character and a combining diacritic: Ạ ạ Ḣ ḣ

As noted elsewhere, the keyboard also does not support the Turned V.

You end up with an interesting situation: mst subdotted vowels will be typed using a single precomposed combining diacritic. The subdoted-a will be entered as a decomposed charcater sequence rather than as a single precomposed character.

This is a limitation of physical keyboards. It is not practical or economic to create a new physical keyboard each time soem one provides documentation for new languages or new character requirements. Thats why virtual keyboards and third party keyboard driver solutions developed and are used in lieu of physical keyboards in many countries.

3) Current versions of Arial Unicode MS and Gentium are suitable for some Nigerian languages, but not all Nigerian languages.


Andrew

Happy New Year 2007! Hope the holiday season was good (whichever holidays you observed)!

I've opened up a new "wikigroup" on the PanAfriL10n.org website/wiki for Nigerian localisation: http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/NG-L10n/HomePage

The object is to provide a more flexible space for Nigerian localisers to list their contact details, websites, and projects. This is in some ways an online "virtual plaza/market," interactive, with the added advantage that it links with the larger PanAfrican Localisation wiki and other country-specific "wikigroups."

Among other things, I am trying to set up an RSS feed from this forum to the new wikigroup.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

The PanAfriL10n.org page on Efik, Ibibio and Anaang has been updated. See http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki....oc/EfikIbibioAnaang (corrections, more updates are invited).

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

Just modified the board name from Ibibio, Efik, Anaang & ICT (fonts, keyboards & applications) to Ibibio, Efik, Anaang and ICT (fonts, keyboards, applications). The ampersands were making a problem for the RSS feed, strangely enough. Now the feed works. See: http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/NG-L10n/L10nForums

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project

Edited by author 11-23-2007 02:01 PM
During the last four weeks there has been a discussion about keyboard layouts on the a12n-collaboration list. The main topic is plans by the One Laptop Per Child project for a multilingual keyboard for its "XO" laptop. The keyboard layout would be intended to support languages of Nigeria (presumably including Ibibio, Efik & Anaang) or the whole of West Africa.

If you are interested, see http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/pu...a12n-collaboration/ (Note- this list is not an official OLPC forum)

The OLPC layouts are shown at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:WAfrica-Alt-1.png
&
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nigeria_Keyboard

The main website of OLPC is http://laptop.org/

Don

Nice site!

FYI, the Uyo Ibibio Dictionary (PREPRINT DRAFT V01, 2004-06-13) is available online as a PDF document (132 pages) at http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Courses...io_dictionary01.pdf

... and also in searchable form on the My Ibibio site at http://www.geocities.com/myibibio/dictionary/index.html

Actually they are complementary in that the first is Ibibio-English, and the second is English-Ibibio.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

This message board has been getting a lot of spam recently. Do any of the subscribers or others who read the it have any thoughts about:
1) how to deal with the spam (upgrading to version of QuickTopic that permits moderation would cost money)?
2) the continued need for this forum as opposed to other forums on Ibibio, Efik and Anaang, and ICT?

Any serious proposals and thoughts are welcome.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net