The Tunsi Alphabet: alphabet

By Béchir Talbi

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 northeastern tip of Africa. It is the northernmost country on 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, to account for the development of mass media. In other words, our task is to provide a key for reading and writing this language, 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 several 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/

• Language: English
• Publisher: Béchir Talbi
• Release date: Jun 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9798201244514

Book preview

Copyright

Foreword

A

s this book contains diacritics and phonetic symbols, we ask readers to check the compatibility of their devices, whether they are equipped with the right software to display all symbols and letters. Again, please, before the purchase, be sure that your device displays properly the following:

Latin capital letter S with macron below S

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/

Introduction

Geographically, Tunisia is an Afro-Mediterranean country located to the north-eastern tip of Africa. It is the northernmost country of this continent. It shares borders with Algeria to the west and Libya to the south-east. Compared to its neighbors, this country is not very extended. Its area is 163 610 km2 for a population of 11 037 225 inhabitants (July 2015).

Historically, the country