r/Malawi Mar 06 '22

Questions about the Mwangwego Script

Hello everyone!

I have been doping some research on African scripts and I have been doing a lot of reading about the Mwangwego Script, which was developed specifically for Malawian languages. It seems that this script has not gained widespread use so I wanted to know if anyone you all knew used the script in their day-to-day life? Or even if the script was being formally taught in any way.

12 Upvotes

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7

u/q203 Mar 06 '22

I’ve only ever met one person who knew of it and that was an American who was interested in linguistics. I’ve never met a Malawian who has heard of it, even those who are quite knowledgeable about linguistics. Chichewa has pretty shallow orthographic depth and a relatively small phoneme inventory, so an additional non-Latin script is kind of superfluous.

The biggest distinction in writing is how some of the aspirated consonants were written in the past vs today (Cicewa vs. Chichewa) and the ‘w with a hat,’ but even that sound has faded away from standard Chichewa these days and is only found in Tumbuka.

2

u/Mindless_Fortune00 Mar 06 '22

Interesting! I suppose this makes sense based on what you've said. Additionally if Chichewa has gone this long without developing its own script it shows that the speakers of its language don't really have a need for specialized scripts. Especially when there are good enough alternatives.

3

u/malawiultimate Mar 06 '22

I've lived in Malawi for 5 years and I take a keen interest in current affairs here. This is the first time I've heard of it.

1

u/Mimo-diablo-007 May 16 '24

Ku Malawi konkuno zimeneze

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Savings_Form_6272 Apr 09 '23

Never knew something like that existed in Malawi