Talk:Pan-Nigerian Alphabet

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[edit] Phonetic values

Are the phonemic values of these letters standardised in the Pan-Nigerian alphabet, or does each letter represent a small category of sounds? Could someone who knows them add IPA transcriptions for the associated sounds? —Felix the Cassowary 08:12, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

I recall hearing more of the history of the PanNigerian alphabet project than is related in this article. Among other things, there was also a spinoff effort called PanKwa that resulted in a Mac font (pre-Unicode) that, despite the name, covered a range of West African language transcription needs. Will try to get relevant input.--A12n 17:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Haven't been able to get to that, but another historical note worth pursuing either for this article or another related one, is that there was apparently an effort before Nigerian independence to adapt the Africa Alphabet to Nigerian languages. Among the differences was the use of modified Latin letters rather than the subdot letters.I encountered reference to the ensuing controversy in something written about Igbo language, but do not have sufficient detail to write it up further. In the case of Igbo, the Onwu orthography c.1960 relied on the earlier usages. The Pan Nigerian alphabet, in effect, codifies such older usage for all Nigerian languages. --A12n 14:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode visibility

Thus spake the article:

  • "If you have a Unicode font installed with the Pan-Nigerian glyphs then you should see an identical table below:"

But not if you have a browser that actually uses the font it's told to use – Internet Explorer. I just solved the problem by putting the Unicode template around the special characters.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:50 CET | 2006/11/15