Friday 19 April 2013

The Education Section of the Jamtan Website is devoted to the introduction of the Fulfulde language. While the Fulfulde is not an official language in all countries with a strong Fulani presence, it plays an important role in the identity of the Fulani people. The cultural relevance of the Fulani language and the tremendous interest about it have been brilliantly expressed in the articles of Cheikh Ahmidou Kane and Sonja Diallo provided below.
In the article Languages of Colonization and African Cultural Identity,
Cheikh Hamidou Kane examines the impact of the historic clash of culture between the European and the African and African people's motivation in learning French.
French is a language of use, practical, utilitarian, functional tool giving access to the modern world, whereas Pulaar (Fulfulde) is a language of life, a reflection of the Fulani peoples' human condition of today and yesterday, the most irreducible means of expressing one's cultural identity. To speak French is on the order of doing and to speak Pulaar, the order of being. In her article Defining education within a grassroots literacy movement
By Dr. Sonja Fagerberg-Diallo addresses the questions of the why and the how to develop so-called literacy programs in traditional languages. Sonja Diallo describes the experience of the promotion of National Language in Senegal.
S Diallo demonstrates the importance of a cultural dimension in which becoming literate becomes a media both for knowing better one's own culture, as well as for supporting that culture in a time of rapid social change.

Foreign alphabet, have been used to write Fulani Languages, Arabic in the past, and Latin more recently. However the UNESCO at various conferences in 1966, 1971, and 1989, helped introduce a new writing system. In this website that writing is retained and slightly modified to adapt to the web programming. It is important to note that the University of Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal is developing a Fulfulde Keyboard under the direction of Dr Fary S. Ka.
The Jamtan team envisioned both relevant and useful themes about which a series of words and their sounds will be performed. This was divided into 5 sub-groups: Numbers, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Glossary. Several topics were chosen including: Numbers, Mathematical Operations , the Computer and the Internet
Body, Cooking Domestic Animal, Farming, Fishing and the Environment, Greetings, and Time. Voices were added to most of the terms.


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