バムン文字

概要プロパティリストテーブル

Bamum is a Unicode block containing the characters used for the modern script of the Bamum language (western Cameroon). The characters for old spellings (stages A-F) are in the Bamum supplement block.

The Bamum scripts are a series of six scripts created for the Bamum language by King Njoya of Cameroon in the early twentieth century. They are notable for evolving from a pictographic system to an alphabetic syllabic writing over 14 years, from 1896 to 1910. The Bamum alphabet was introduced in 1918, but the script died out in 1931.

It's a really funny fact that Njoya was not satisfied with the writing and changed it 6 times. If the first variant was purely ideographic, the last was a syllabic script. At first, the signs were just drawings, then gradually they began to be used as riddles until their lexical meaning was lost.

The goal of the writing reforms was to reduce the number of signs. However, Njoya did not think about the side effects of this decision. For example, he ignored that Bamum is a tonal language. As a result, many homographs appeared in the text. Homographs are words that were spelled the same way but differed in pronunciation due to tones, which, therefore, led to semantic confusion.

After the French arrived in Cameroon in 1918, they treated Njoya badly, as he had a good relationship with the German administration. That's why Njoya went to the greatest exile, and the Bamum alphabet was banned. The writing is currently on the verge of extinction.

プロパティ

スコープ	A6A0–A6FF
文字	96

キャラクターのリスト

文字表

A640–A69F Cyrillic Extended-B A700–A71F 声調修飾文字

0: 基本多言語面

1: 追加多言語面

2: 追加漢字面

3: 第三漢字面

4-13：使用されていない

14: 追加特殊用途面

15: 私用面

16: 私用面