In this book, the author proposes a modern alphabet of “Tunsi”, the mother tongue of the Tunisians. Tunisia is an Afro-Mediterranean country located at the north-eastern tip of Africa. Actually, it is the northernmost country in this continent. The linguistic landscape is diverse. In addition to Arabic which literal variety is the official language, other languages include Tunisian dialectal i.e. Tunsi, Tamazight, Judeo-Tunisian and French.
Tamazight is particularly spoken in the Berberophone Regions of the country probably by a hundred thousand people. Regarding Judeo-Tunisian, it remains still alive despite a drastic reduction in the number of its speakers. These do not exceed the two-thousand, in the best of cases. Not to mention that these two languages are mother tongues, in the same way as Tunsi or even French in some cases.
This project aims to enhance the status of Tunsi, in order to account for the development of mass media. In other words, our task is to provide a key for reading and writing this language, in order to promote its use as a language of culture and civilization, and insert it into the educational system and formal communications.
The reader will discover several choices made by the author. The proposal itself is based on the “Unicode” standard as to the choice of the letters and signs. Also, the author has introduced five letters with diacritics and a number of conventions, including the emphatic letters.
As this book contains diacritics, we ask readers to check the compatibility of their devices, whether they are equipped with the right software to display these symbols and letters. Again, please, before the purchase, be sure that your device displays properly the following:
Latin capital letter S with macron below S̱
Latin capital letter A with Caron Ǎ, ǎ, /ʢɛ/
Latin capital letter D with stroke Ð, Đ, /ðɛ/
Latin capital letter H with stoke Ħ, ħ, /ħɛ/
Latin capital letter G with Caron Ǧ, ǧ, /ɣɛ/
Latin capital letter T with stroke Ŧ, ŧ, /θɛ/
Tamazight is particularly spoken in the Berberophone Regions of the country probably by a hundred thousand people. Regarding Judeo-Tunisian, it remains still alive despite a drastic reduction in the number of its speakers. These do not exceed the two-thousand, in the best of cases. Not to mention that these two languages are mother tongues, in the same way as Tunsi or even French in some cases.
This project aims to enhance the status of Tunsi, in order to account for the development of mass media. In other words, our task is to provide a key for reading and writing this language, in order to promote its use as a language of culture and civilization, and insert it into the educational system and formal communications.
The reader will discover several choices made by the author. The proposal itself is based on the “Unicode” standard as to the choice of the letters and signs. Also, the author has introduced five letters with diacritics and a number of conventions, including the emphatic letters.
As this book contains diacritics, we ask readers to check the compatibility of their devices, whether they are equipped with the right software to display these symbols and letters. Again, please, before the purchase, be sure that your device displays properly the following:
Latin capital letter S with macron below S̱
Latin capital letter A with Caron Ǎ, ǎ, /ʢɛ/
Latin capital letter D with stroke Ð, Đ, /ðɛ/
Latin capital letter H with stoke Ħ, ħ, /ħɛ/
Latin capital letter G with Caron Ǧ, ǧ, /ɣɛ/
Latin capital letter T with stroke Ŧ, ŧ, /θɛ/
