The 1988 INALCO notation

A large part of written Comorian literature — tales, poems, song transcriptions, early textbooks — was published before 2009 and uses a different spelling: the INALCO 1988 notation, developed by Ahmed-Chamanga, Lafon and Sibertin-Blanc.

To access this heritage, you need to mentally convert this older notation into the modern 2019 norm. That's what this module teaches.

Good news: 3 main differences cover most of it. Lesson 6.2 adds the rarer gaps (np, npb, tsh, apostrophe).

The most important difference. The 1988 notation was designed to be typed on any typewriter — so no special characters like ɓ or ɗ.

Consequence: the « b » of 1988 represents two different sounds:

• The *weak b = standard b (loanwords: biro, dipe*)
• The *strong b = implosive ɓ (native words: baba = ɓaɓa, banga* = ɓanga)

Same for « d »: daho = ɗaho, dago = ɗago.

The reader had to guess from context and root. That's why learning 1988 already required knowing the implosives aurally.

The 2019 norm solved this by introducing dedicated letters ɓ and ɗ.

In 1988, nasal vowels (today's â, ê, î, ô, û) were marked inconsistently — sometimes with a circumflex, sometimes not. The word âda (« custom », Arabic origin) could be written:

• âda (with circumflex)
• ada (without)
• aada (with doubled vowel)

Depending on the author and era. In 2019, â is a full letter: always âda, full stop.

In 1988, we wrote nbuzi (goat) — with initial nb. In 2019, the nasal is written m before a b (consistent with its bilabial nature).

But the 1988 nb stands for two sounds: the 1988 article states that nbuzi has a « strong » b in shingazidja and a « weak » b in shindzuani. The 2019 norm tells them apart:

• strong b → mɓ: mɓuzi (shingazidja)
• weak b → mb: mbuzi (shindzuani, as Ahmed-Chamanga writes it, 1992, p. 20)

To convert an nb, you therefore need to know which dialect the text comes from, and to know the word.

Some emblematic words:

• banga (1988) → ɓanga (2019) — hut
• baba (1988) → ɓaɓa (2019) — dad
• daho (1988) → ɗaho (2019) — house (Ng?, to be confirmed)
• dago (1988) → ɗago (2019) — house (Nz, Ma)
• nbuzi (1988) → mɓuzi (Ng) or mbuzi (Nz) (2019) — goat
• taâbu (1988) → taâbu (2019) — problem (spelling stays, but â is now a letter)

Mechanical conversion requires knowing which 1988 « b »s and « d »s are implosive. For that, you need word etymology or a reference lexicon.

Lesson 6.2 systematises these differences in an explicit conversion table. You'll have everything you need to transcribe a 1988 text in minutes.