BOSTON
From his small office near the Charles River, Dr. Fallou Ngom can envision the rewriting of much of African history, including the slave trade. He knows, though, that he can’t do it alone.
Ngom, who was born in Senegal, is beginning his second year as director of the African Language Program at Boston University, where graduate students are learning to read and write five African languages in a modified form of Arabic script.
The writing system known as Ajami, from the Arabic word for stranger, is not traditionally used in language and African studies programs at other universities. Ngom has set out to teach the script so scholars can translate a massive amount of unread African texts, some dating to the 10th century. He expects they will provide new information and indigenous perspectives about the continent’s history, whose recording has been shaped by travelogues and colonial archives in European languages and Arabic.
