02/02/2024
# Kuhuullee Confusion
N.B. This piece is for critical readers, not for fun. Those who are not able to read it, just ignore it.
Over, the last couple of days I was in a social media blackout as the Facebook locked me with a pretext of security alert. I had scanty information regarding the so-called “KHUULLEE AFAAN OROMOO”, a “writing system” that a certain Hassen has claimed to have developed it. I just got the chance to see the extent of grumpy conversations surrounding the matter.
I am so offended that the Qubee issue has dominated our conversations at a time when we have daunting issues before us to deliberate on.
For me a case is closed as far as Qubee Afaan Oromo is concerned. I can’t get it why our own people try to mess with it. I can understand why those who don’t like Qubee try their level best to damage it.
I read from some social media pieces that a certain Master Hassen worked on his new “finding” for 19 years and gave it to a group of intellectuals for comment, and they made the document public and created some confusion. I read also that the inventor of the Khuullee thing wanted to fill a gap that he observed in Qubee Afan Oromoo and that he aspires that the Oromo language should use a script invented by an Oromo person instead of using an adopted script.
The view that a language should use a system invented by a native speaker is futile and impractical. Almost all the languages with a writing system adopted their systems from available systems with some degrees of tailoring. Afan Oromo made the right decision to adopt the Latin alphabet which 70% of the world populations are making use of.
Afan Oromo didn’t have any problem to use the system because the characters were already included in the Unicode Standard so that they can be used on any computer (which includes any kind of smartphone) all over the world. Qubee doesn’t have any problem to exchange typographic characters between digital devices, because every single character has been assigned a unique digital number called Code Point.
Out of 7000+ existing languages, some close to 4000 languages have writing systems as far as number is concerned. Yet only some 200 of the systems are well recognized in the Unicode standard. Still only 5 writing systems are extensively used by the world population. These are:
1. Latin (estimated at almost 70 % of the world’s population 4.99 billion)
2. Chinese (estimated 1.34 billion people worldwide)
3. Arabic (estimated 660 million people worldwide)
4. Devanagari (estimated 600 million people worldwide)
5. Bengali (estimated 300 million people worldwide)
Thus, there is no need to complain that our writing script is not created by our own person. For that matter we adopted Qubee in the way it could fit our speech features. Qubee is not a Latin thing now. It is an Afaan Oromoo asset. We don’t regret to use it. If “my own invention” is the case we must avoid using other technologies including planes, ships, vehicles, smart phones, name what not until one of our men invent them for us.
On another count, one of the of gaps the Khuullee inventor is claiming to address is double symbols that represent one speech sound, but can’t be geminated: ch, ny, sh, zy, ph. If really this is thought to be a problem, you don’t need to alter the entire Qubee. You can simply introduce a piece of diacritic mark to indicate it is geminated. For that matter, I found only two words in Afaan Oromoo that give two meanings depending on gemination. These are “Hodhuu” and “Suphee” sucking or sewing, clay or mending, respectively. There may be more, but they should be very rare.
The rest of other words which are written by using qubee dachaa don’t make semantic sense if you try to pronounce them without gemination. For instance, Dachaa, gocha, kallacha etc are geminated by default. They don’t make sense when you don’t stress the consonants. Even if you feel this is a shortcoming, you may simply suggest to put a dot on top of the dachaa letters. Even that wouldn’t be an easy task to adopt. The reason is that you can’t fix it on the already printed out body of writings because you don’t have control over them.
What surprised me more is the invention of numerical symbols. The entire world is using Arabic numbers 0, 1, 2, 3….Why do we need to create awkward symbols and call for change of the universally utilized numbers?
In fact, the so-called “KHUULLEE AFAAN OROMOO” could have made credible contribution if it was designed some decades ago before Afan Oromo had adopted the Latin writing system.
Now if anyone wants to contribute to the improvement of an Oromo writing system, they don’t need to create a new system because it will not be feasible to implement it.
A writing system is not something that you can conveniently change from time to time or attempt to do so because of the following reasons:
1. In the first place, there is no perfect orthography ever adopted for any language in the world. Afan Oromo is lucky enough to use a latecomer advantage that helped it to use a system which is close to phonetic representation. For that matter there is no language that represents its speech with phonetic writing.
Let us take few words in Englis such as knowledge, psychology, physician, mortgage, butcher, yoghurt, choir etc. We don’t pronounce them the waw they are spelled.
French is worse. Those who know the language can write about it. I can’t say much because I don’t speak French.
I remember a joke attributed to a certain Indian student. They say this Indian student who was attending French classes, could not pronounce the words the way they were written. Then he got angry and said, “These stupid French write Kolkata and Read Bombay”. For that matter, there are awful mistakes in every orthography. But the user communities do not dare to change them because the mess it causes is so grave. Here are a few points.
2. A vast body of literature (academic, creative, technical, legal, religious, general-purpose materials, dictionaries etc.) have been produced and put in to use since the script has been adopted to serve the language. As a result, you can’t substitute all those writings by the new orthography you aspire to use. You can’t also discard them out of archives and libraries wherever they are located.
3. Millions of people have been educated since the system was put in place. You can’t simply make them irrelevant and illiterate by introducing a new writing system.
4. The issue is not only a mechanical and technical business. Writing systems are attached to incalculable emotions and psychological factors. As far as Qubee Afaan Oromo is concerned it is a hard-won common asset and a unifying force for the Oromo people. There are lots of historical processes and sacrificial prices our gallant heroes and heroines paid to materialize it.
5. A writing system is not an individual venture that you can propose to change or suggest a change waking up at a daybreak. It is a public wealth that millions care for. You might have got a brilliant design that feels fantastic. Let alone an individual “innovator” even an institution or government cannot attempt to enforce use of it.
Finally, I found the so-called Khuulle alphabetic table very weird and confusing. I wanted to look at the signs and noticed that C is placed in different positions to stand for C, CH, H, K, Kh and R. Lower case m is also used in different positions for m, n, ny, s, sh and z. What a confusion?
As I said earlier the whole numerical signs universally accepted are assigned wired signs.
It is possible to fantasise with whatever subject. However, hands off Qubee Afaan Oromoo.
Tullu Liban
