A quick survey of Tifinagh

Some archaeologists agree that sometimes in the fifth century BC, Numidians and other Berber kingdoms in North Africa developed a script called Numidic. This script appears to be sophisticated at that time. But nowadays, it needs improvements to make it able to represent a number of sounds of the language.
From the outset of this script Numidians paid attention to the form of the script. That is the aesthetic and the pragmatic aspect of the alphabet. They tried to make it simple and beautiful.
In the Numidic tombstones, the script was written either top down or right to left and without representing vowels. Archaeologists noticed that the script differed from a region to another along North Africa.
After the Roman Empire’s invasion of North Africa, the Numidic script went backward and was replaced by the Latin script. However, it remained useful in some areas. For instance, in the Touareg region: an Amazighe community that occupied a great part of North Africa, from parts of the Maghreb to black Africa. Nowadays, the scripts still exist in Libya, Algeria, Mali, Burkina, Nigeria and Chad.
The Touareg preserved Numidic scripts but in a simplified version. These ashes of Numidic scripts were used in very restricted fields like poetry and love letters in addition to decoration. The Touareg women used to draw some letters of these scripts as tattoos on their hands, faces and as drawings on the walls of their houses.
This simplified version of Numidic scripts was called Tifinagh. There are some people who think Tifinagh means “Phoenicians/ Punic letters”, which means that it is derived from the Punic script. “Ancient Berber is thought to have sprung off the Punic script roughly around the 6th century BC”(Lawrence 1996-2005).
Bouhjar(2004) says that:
« L’alphabet Tifinagh est très certainement d’origine Phonecienne - punique, comme la quasi-totalité des systèmes existants ». It means that, like many other writing systems, Tifinagh is certainly derived from the Punic script.
Whatever the origin of Tifinagh is, scholars agreed that it had disappeared around the 3rd century AD and was preserved by the Touaregs.
The Amazighe language was absent for a long period. North Africa underwent many changes. Here, one can mention the Vandal and the Byzantine invasion. In the 9th century, North Africa had to undergo the Islamic conquest. The coming of the new religion and the conversion of the Amazighe to Islam obliged them to neglect their language to learn Arabic, the language of the new religion. So, all literate Touareg men were literate in Arabic while the women, who remained unable to study Arabic, kept their script Tifinagh.
1200 years ago, the Amazighe language was revived again by the coming of the anti-caliphal Abadihit. The latter established a state in the central Maghreb and at this time the Amazighe language emerged in many writings and books.
In the 11th and 12th century, Amazighe language reappeared again in North Africa thanks the coming of the Almoravid dynasty. This latter unified Berber tribes that were distributed along African Sahara.
In this era, Amazighe writings started to appear once again. This was due to the effort of the leaders who believed in Islam as well as their origin and culture. Many books were written. For instance: Riwayat Al Achyakh that contains a large number of Amazigh sentences. Akidat Attawhid, and IbnToumart’s dictionary; Kitab Al Asmaa. This era was a glorious time for Amazighe literature (Lameen Souag).
From that time on, Amazighe writings could be found anywhere in North Africa. Even though they where rare and did not follow the same standards and principles, these writings had some importance.
In the late 60s, the Amazighe language broke into the field as a political issue. It was launched by Kabylian activists in Algeria. These people formed the first Berber Academy now called “Agraw n Imazighen” in Paris. Their project was to restore the Amazigh writing by forming a script from Tifinagh and the old Libyan script with some changes and additions.
After that, many Amazighe movements started to emerge. This was due to the work of the first activists who tried to make Amazighe community aware of their issue.
However, governments in Algeria and Morocco restricted the spreading of these Amazighe issue. So Tifinagh writing became a taboo. No one could write it publicly. However, It was used by some conscious students at the university in a very limited and hidden way.
A few years later, these movements found their way from Kabily to Morocco, then to Libya then became wide spread in the whole of North Africa. At the beginning, there was a hesitation about the final form of the script. There was no agreement between those movements on how Tifinagh should be written. Even if the difference between the available scripts was partial, it was still difficult to find a way out.
Another problem is that the script was linguistically unsatisfactory because it failed “to represent several marginally phonemic emphatic contrasts” (Souag).
With the increase of critics against Tifinagh, the scholars found that the only remedy was to adopt an already formed script for this Language.
Because of some historical and geographical considerations in North Africa, apart form Tifinagh, two scripts were selected for that. Aramean because it is the script of Arabic the language of Islam and all literate people in Morocco manipulate this script. This in addition to Latin script which is the script of the second language in Morocco, French.
Hence forth, scholars and experts work to reshape either Arabic or Latin script to fit Amazighe language. Throughout their study, these experts will judge which script can fit Amazighe language.
However, there were some people who refused to give up Tifinagh, the common script of Amazighe. They worked as well to show the linguistic abilities of this script by improving it.

M.A.TAIBI

Don't waste your time

Ambitious people feel that time is not enough to realize their goals especially if they are so heavy. Some times, I have the same feeling. When, I plan for my life in the future, I feel that I need hundreds of years to fulfil my goals and when I think too much, ideas stuck in my mind and let everything down. I surrender and I let my self to my fate.

“Time is money” is not a new proverb for me. I’ve been hearing that since I was a child in the primary school. Our tutors told us that “Time is like a sword if you don’t cut, it will cut you” this is the lateral translation of the Arab proverb. The two proverbs are different but they bear the same idea that is we have to benefit from each moment. When I say to benefit, I mean to do good deeds. Working, learning, studying, helping people and worshiping God and anything out of this context is a waste of time.

The notion of time is one of the physicians’ major concerns. They tried to understand it and explain it to common people. We often hear people making comments on time like these: “oh time flies today”. “Oh my watch doesn’t move”. These two comments mean that sometime, time goes faster and sometimes goes slower. We all have this feeling all the time but is it true?

Only naïve people think that time is only related to the clock. The clock does not go faster or slower but what changes is the human state of mind. The movement of time changes according to the situation that we live in. when we are in a happy state, we feel that time flies but when we are in a sad or bad state, we feel that time goes slower. This is not the physical reality but the emotional one. From this, we can assume that the movement of time is merely relative.

Time is relative and related to the state of mind. I remember that when I was a student, I feel that one hour in one school subject is like two hours in another. When I get to English class, I feel not satisfied but in Arabic or Maths classes, I fed up quickly and I keep checking my watch.

Moments of pleasure and entertainment pass quickly too. When you are in beautiful place with people that you love, time goes faster and you wish to stop your clock whereas, if you are in a bad or sad situation you feel as if your watch is stuck. For instance, if you are alone, bored and far from those that you love, you wish that time goes faster. But whatever your wish is one hour is one hour whenever and wherever you are.

Psychologists proved that the age has a great impact on perceiving the notion of time. In childhood, people feel that time goes too slow. This perception is due to their unconscious wish to grow up. We find that little girls try to imitate the adolescents. They want to be beautiful with mature bodies and attracting boys. Little boys try to show their strength. They want to have strong muscles. Both girls and boys want to be remarked by their society. From this, we can understand that time in childhood goes slowly.

Between the age of 20 and 30, people feel that time is moving quickly. Here, they wish if they stay longer at this stage and they keep telling “I’m twenty years” if they are asked about their age. It’s normal because it’s the best period of life in which the human being reaches the summit of the physical, intellectual and emotional development. At this stage of life, one must devote his/her time for enriching themselves by knowledge and accumulating experiences. So, we assume that time goes faster in this period.

Another instance of life is adulthood or maturity. In this period, people normally tend to calm down in everything. They reach a level where their personality is completely shaped and balanced. Due to their accumulated experience, they respond to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate manner. At this age, people feel that they are in parallel with time. They feel that their youth is nearly accomplished and they start seeing their unfulfilled dreams in their children’s. In some cases, a person may lose maturity in adulthood. Here, we are talking about Midlife crisis. This term is “used to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" of life, as a result of sensing the passing of youth and the imminence of old age. Sometimes, transitions experienced in these years, such as aging in general, menopause, the death of parents, or children leaving home”[1]. Under these conditions, the person’s behaviour may completely change and try benefit from his final moments of youth. He/she may get involved in many kinds of adventures such as in career, romance.

In old age, people lose the notion of time. They go out of time. They start paying no attention to days and years. Moreover, some of them lose the biological circadian clock. This later serves to guide the person and gives him the feeling of time; when to eat, when to sleep. It also show when is the morning, afternoon, evening and night. This feeling is innate in human being and it does not need a clock to know time. When people get older, they lose it. An example of this is that my grandfather may get up at 2:00 am and ask my grandmother to prepare some tea.

To sum up, seize your youth before getting old and useless for yourself, your family and for all your society. Everything is possible in life except knowing what will happen tomorrow or bring back yesterday to correct it.

By: M.A.TAIBI






[1] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why do we lie?

We all know what a lie is. Nobody can deny lying even once month. We all hear lies everywhere. But what most of us don’t know is that lying is something innate in human being. More than that, there are some psychologists who said that even animals lie!! I’ve read that there was a Gorilla named Koko; confronted by her handlers after a tantrum in which she had torn a steel sink out of its moorings, the Gorilla made a sign in American Sign Language in which she accused the cat. "Cat did it," pointing at her tiny kitten. But what if this is only an exception or a joke from the Gorilla?

According to wikipedia, lying is “untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment”.

To lie means to be socially intelligent. Social intelligence or Machiavellian intelligence as it is defined by cognitive sciences is “the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups”. It starts at the human age of about four years, at this age kids begin to be able to lie convincingly. Before that age, kids think that in any event, their point of view is always the right one. For this they don’t care about making their lies believable. And here you can enjoy hearing their marvellous stories when they start lying. I remember that we I was a teenager, there was a garden near our house. In that garden there were apple trees full of apples. Some kids penetrate into the garden to pick some apples. After getting them, they heard some one coming. It was the owner of the garden. They all fled, except a little kid. He was afraid and trembling. The man rebuked and asked him: “from where did you pick these apples?” the little kid answered (honestly): “from that olive tree”. Here, we can obviously see that the kid wants to lie but he didn’t take into consideration to be credible. The man burst out laughing and let him go. It is the most stupid lie you can hear, but it works.

To lie and trying to change the reality means that there is something that we want to hide not to be punished, to be seen in a good image, or simply we don’t want the others to be hurt of the reality. Behavioural scientists claim that there are many to lie for but they all fall in these three ones: fear, greed and hate.

Lying because of fear:
Fear means fear of being rejected or losing something or someone. Kashy and DePaulo, held a research about “liars” and found that people who tend to lie more are those who are more concerned with self-presentation prestigious and more sociable. Those that tended to tell fewer lies, are more highly socialized, and reported higher satisfaction with same-sex relationships. It was also noted, not surprisingly, that individuals who tended to lie more, tell more self-serving lies (beneficial lies) rather than altruistic or what we call white lies.

The charismatic liars are the ones that pay attention to their appearance in the eyes of others. they lie to make themselves popular and acceptable this is called ego boosting. They are good actors. More than this they lie and believe their lies. This is mainly inter-sexual lies. Women lie to men and vice versa. They tend to hide their dark sides and show the bright one. These kinds of lies are not persistent. They end when they reach the aim for which they are invented for. At that time the masks fall down and each one begins to see the other naked.

Another kind of fear caused lies that we find among different sexes are those that are related to avoiding conflicts by misunderstanding. The man tries to hide some facts because he is afraid of being rejected by his woman or creating a conflict with her. Women try to get deep into details of everything. They pay attention to the very minute details opposite to man who neglect them. This may make man restless sometimes. He may feel that he is always watched. Here we are talking about jealousy. And so as not to make the woman angry he simply lies.

Lying because of greed:
This lie is mainly related to power and money. We hear them when we go to the market or when we watch TV. Many tradesmen tend to show the positive characteristics of their products and hide the negative ones. On TV, politicians tell lies to the people so as to keep the positions. They show their good images and deny their bad deeds. So as not to say that those are lies, they call it propaganda.

Lie because of hate:
It is also called lie of malice. This kind of lies is the worst because it aims to do harm to people it is backbiting. This happens when someone hates or envies a person and tells lies about him or her to be disapproved by others. And example of that is when a boy tries to get close to a girl and when she refuses, he start inventing stories about her reputation or the opposite. Or when a girl wants to show to people that she is so pure, she tells lies about other girls to make contrast. She pretends to be the best. It’s a cold revenge. These kinds of liars are psychologically sick.

The question now is “is it necessary to lie?” “Can we live without lies?” Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist who studies deception at the University of Virginia, says some lying is necessary in our everyday life. More than this, she said that "It would be a disaster if everybody were totally honest,". From her words we can assume that to tell the truth in any situation may hurt people. An example of this is when we want to hide somebody’s scandals. We should not tell openly other people’s mistakes and bad deeds if they didn’t hurt anybody else. I mean that we tell the truth if we are asked to do so for some reasons like in courts. DePaulo added that «Lies are like wishes, behind almost every lie there is a wish that the lie was true."
M.A.TAIBI

Why do we lie?

We all know what a lie is. Nobody can deny lying even once month. We all hear lies everywhere. But what most of us don’t know is that lying is something innate in human being. More than that, there are some psychologists who said that even animals lie!! I’ve read that there was a Gorilla named Koko; confronted by her handlers after a tantrum in which she had torn a steel sink out of its moorings, the Gorilla made a sign in American Sign Language in which she accused the cat. "Cat did it," pointing at her tiny kitten. But what if this is only an exception or a joke from the Gorilla?

According to wikipedia, lying is “untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment”.

To lie means to be socially intelligent. Social intelligence or Machiavellian intelligence as it is defined by cognitive sciences is “the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups”. It starts at the human age of about four years, at this age kids begin to be able to lie convincingly. Before that age, kids think that in any event, their point of view is always the right one. For this they don’t care about making their lies believable. And here you can enjoy hearing their marvellous stories when they start lying. I remember that we I was a teenager, there was a garden near our house. In that garden there were apple trees full of apples. Some kids penetrate into the garden to pick some apples. After getting them, they heard some one coming. It was the owner of the garden. They all fled, except a little kid. He was afraid and trembling. The man rebuked and asked him: “from where did you pick these apples?” the little kid answered (honestly): “from that olive tree”. Here, we can obviously see that the kid wants to lie but he didn’t take into consideration to be credible. The man burst out laughing and let him go. It is the most stupid lie you can hear, but it works.

To lie and trying to change the reality means that there is something that we want to hide not to be punished, to be seen in a good image, or simply we don’t want the others to be hurt of the reality. Behavioural scientists claim that there are many to lie for but they all fall in these three ones: fear, greed and hate.

Lying because of fear:
Fear means fear of being rejected or losing something or someone. Kashy and DePaulo, held a research about “liars” and found that people who tend to lie more are those who are more concerned with self-presentation prestigious and more sociable. Those that tended to tell fewer lies, are more highly socialized, and reported higher satisfaction with same-sex relationships. It was also noted, not surprisingly, that individuals who tended to lie more, tell more self-serving lies (beneficial lies) rather than altruistic or what we call white lies.

The charismatic liars are the ones that pay attention to their appearance in the eyes of others. they lie to make themselves popular and acceptable this is called ego boosting. They are good actors. More than this they lie and believe their lies. This is mainly inter-sexual lies. Women lie to men and vice versa. They tend to hide their dark sides and show the bright one. These kinds of lies are not persistent. They end when they reach the aim for which they are invented for. At that time the masks fall down and each one begins to see the other naked.

Another kind of fear caused lies that we find among different sexes are those that are related to avoiding conflicts by misunderstanding. The man tries to hide some facts because he is afraid of being rejected by his woman or creating a conflict with her. Women try to get deep into details of everything. They pay attention to the very minute details opposite to man who neglect them. This may make man restless sometimes. He may feel that he is always watched. Here we are talking about jealousy. And so as not to make the woman angry he simply lies.

Lying because of greed:
This lie is mainly related to power and money. We hear them when we go to the market or when we watch TV. Many tradesmen tend to show the positive characteristics of their products and hide the negative ones. On TV, politicians tell lies to the people so as to keep the positions. They show their good images and deny their bad deeds. So as not to say that those are lies, they call it propaganda.

Lie because of hate:
It is also called lie of malice. This kind of lies is the worst because it aims to do harm to people it is backbiting. This happens when someone hates or envies a person and tells lies about him or her to be disapproved by others. And example of that is when a boy tries to get close to a girl and when she refuses, he start inventing stories about her reputation or the opposite. Or when a girl wants to show to people that she is so pure, she tells lies about other girls to make contrast. She pretends to be the best. It’s a cold revenge. These kinds of liars are psychologically sick.

The question now is “is it necessary to lie?” “Can we live without lies?” Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist who studies deception at the University of Virginia, says some lying is necessary in our everyday life. More than this, she said that "It would be a disaster if everybody were totally honest,". From her words we can assume that to tell the truth in any situation may hurt people. An example of this is when we want to hide somebody’s scandals. We should not tell openly other people’s mistakes and bad deeds if they didn’t hurt anybody else. I mean that we tell the truth if we are asked to do so for some reasons like in courts. DePaulo added that «Lies are like wishes, behind almost every lie there is a wish that the lie was true."
M.A.TAIBI

taibimoulayabdellah

LooK4hope. it is named so because hope is all what I look for and so you all do.