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Tifinagh

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Tifinagh is the alphabetic script used by the Tuareg, a Berber people of northern Africa, to write their language, Tamasheq or Tamashek. Before the 3rd century AD, Tifinagh was more widely used by speakers of Berber languages (or Tamazight) all across North Africa and on the Canary Islands. This older version of Tifinagh is sometimes named Libyan (French libyque) to distinguish it from the modern version used by the Tuareg. It dates from about the 6th century BC [1] (http://www.mondeberbere.com/langue/tifinagh/tifinagh_apparition.htm). While ultimate Phoenician origin is widely accepted (for it as for most of the world's alphabets), it is clearly very innovative and may have more than one ancestor, "probably Punic and Northern Arabic scripts" according to O'Connor 112; some scholars (eg M. Cohen) consider its origin to be a question as yet unresolved[2] (http://www.mondeberbere.com/langue/tifinagh/tifinagh_origine.htm). Some scholars consider it to be autochthonous in origin. Mustafa A'ashi considers "tifinagh" to be a Berber word deriving from the two words itif + nnegh, meaning our invention in the Berber language; however, given that the singular is tafineq (of which tifinagh is the regular plural), the etymology more commonly given (eg by Karl Prasse) relates to the Greek phoinikos "Phoenician". Mustafa A'ashi suggests that Tifinagh may be older than the Phoenician script, and that that might motivate translating "Tifinagh" as our invention. Other scholars argue that neither etymology is correct.

Traditionally, the script marks no vowels, except word-finally; however, various proposals to allow it to mark vowels have been made in recent times. In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh characters to mark vowels. The letter forms vary significantly across the wide area where Tifinagh is used. The direction of writing varies; right-to-left is common, but the older "Libyan" inscriptions most commonly use the unusual orientation bottom-to-top. Occasionally the script has been used to write other neighboring languages, such as Tagdal Songhai.

A modern version, sometimes styled "Neo-Tifinagh", was put forward by the Académie Berbère in the 1960's; it is written left to right, marks vowels, and has been modified to better fit Northern Berber phonology. In a modified form, this script has recently (2003) been adopted for pedagogical purposes in Morocco.

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Code chart

Tifinagh is encoded in the Unicode range U+2D30—U+2D7F, starting from version 4.1.0. There are 55 defined characters, but there are more characters being used than those defined. In ISO 15924, the code Tfng is assigned to Tifinagh. Here is a comparison chart for the character glyph and the transliteration.

Code	Unicode	Transliteration	Name
2D30	ⴰ	a	ya
2D31	ⴱ	b	yab
2D32	ⴲ	bh	yabh
2D33	ⴳ	g	yag
2D34	ⴴ	gh	yaghh
2D35	ⴵ	dj	Berber Academy yaj
2D36	ⴶ	dj	yaj
2D37	ⴷ	d	yad
2D38	ⴸ	d.	yadh
2D39	ⴹ	d.	yadd
2D3A	ⴺ	d.	yaddh
2D3B	ⴻ	e	yey
2D3C	ⴼ	f	yaf
2D3D	ⴽ	k	yak
2D3E	ⴾ	k	Tuareg yak
2D3F	ⴿ	kh	yakhh
2D40	ⵀ	h	yah
2D41	ⵁ	h	Berber Academy yah
2D42	ⵂ	h	Tuareg yah
2D43	ⵃ	h.	yahh
2D44	ⵄ	a	yaa
2D45	ⵅ	kh	yakh
2D46	ⵆ	kh	Tuareg yakh
2D47	ⵇ	q	yaq
2D48	ⵈ	q	Tuareg yaq
2D49	ⵉ	i	yi
2D4A	ⵊ	j	yazh
2D4B	ⵋ	j	Ahaggar yazh
2D4C	ⵌ	j	Tuareg yazh
2D4D	ⵍ	l	yal
2D4E	ⵎ	m	yam
2D4F	ⵏ	n	yan
2D50	ⵐ	ny	uareg yagn
2D51	ⵑ	ng	Tuareg yang
2D52	ⵒ	p	yap
2D53	ⵓ	u	yu
2D54	ⵔ	r	yar
2D55	ⵕ	r.	yarr
2D56	ⵖ	gh	yagh
2D57	ⵗ	gh	Tuareg yagh
2D58	ⵘ	gh	Ayer yagh
2D59	ⵙ	s	yas
2D5A	ⵚ	s.	yass
2D5B	ⵛ	sh	yash
2D5C	ⵜ	t	yat
2D5D	ⵝ	t.	yath
2D5E	ⵞ	ch	yach
2D5F	ⵟ	t.	yatt
2D60	ⵠ	v	yav
2D61	ⵡ	w	yaw
2D62	ⵢ	y	yay
2D63	ⵣ	z	yaz
2D64	ⵤ	z	Tawellemet yaz
2D65	ⵥ	z.	yazz
2D6F	ⵯ	+w	Labialization mark
2D5C 2D59	ⵜⵙ	ts	yats
2D37 2D63	ⴷⵣ	dz	yadz
2D5C 2D5B	ⵜⵙ	ch	yach
2D37 2D4A	ⴷⵊ	dj	yadzh