An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982. The conference recommended to use single letters for a sound (actually a phoneme) instead of using two or three-letter combinations or letters with diacritical marks.
The African Reference Alphabet is clearly related to the Africa Alphabet and reflected practice based on the latter. The Niamey conference also built on work of a previous UNESCO-organized meeting on harmonization of transcriptions of African languages, that was held in Bamako, Mali in 1966.
Read more about African Reference Alphabet: 1978 Version, 1982 Version
Famous quotes containing the words african, reference and/or alphabet:
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)
“I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city thinks. The city does not think much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you’re thinking
of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)