Wadaad writing
Wadaad writing, also known as Wadaad Arabic, is the traditional Somali adaptation of written Arabic, as well as the Arabic script as historically used to transcribe the Somali language. Originally, it referred to an ungrammatical Arabic featuring some words in Somali, with the proportion of Somali vocabulary terms varying depending on the context. Alongside standard Arabic, wadaad writing was used by Somali religious men ' to record xeer petitions and to write qasidas. It was also used by merchants for business and letter writing. Over the years, various Somali scholars improved and altered the use of the Arabic script for conveying Somali. This culminated in the 1950s with the Galal alphabet''', which substantially modified letter values and introduced new letters for vowels.
History
The Arabic script was introduced to Somalia in the 13th century by Sheikh Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn, a man described as "the most outstanding saint in northern Somalia." Of Somali descent, he sought to advance the teaching of the Qur'an. Al-Kawneyn devised a Somali for the Arabic vowels, which enabled his pupils to read and write in Arabic. Shiekh Abi-Bakr Al Alawi, a Harari historian, states in his book that Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn was of native and local Dir extraction.Though various Somali wadaads and scholars had used the Arabic script to write in Somali for centuries, it would not be until the 19th century when the Qadiriyyah saint Sheikh Uways al-Barawi of the Tuuni clan would improve the application of the Arabic script to represent Somali. He applied it to the Maay dialect of southern Somalia, which at the time was the closest to standardizing Somali with the Arabic script. Al-Barawi modeled his alphabet after the Arabic transcription adopted by the Amrani of Barawa to write their Swahili dialect, Bravanese.
Wadaad writing was often unintelligible to Somali pupils who learned standard Arabic in government-run schools. During the 1930s in the northwestern British Somaliland protectorate, Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil attempted to standardize the orthography in his book The Institution of Modern Correspondence in the Somali language. Following in the footsteps of Sh. Ibraahim 'Abdallah Mayal, Makaahiil therein championed the use of the Arabic script for writing Somali, showing examples of this usage through proverbs, letters and sentences.
Revision by J. S. King
In 1887, British writer, J. S. King wrote for the Indian Antiquary an article titled "Somali as a written language" in which he proposes a standard Arabic based Somali script. Some of the main changes and features were the combined use of both Arabic and Sanskrit features:- The Somali dh
' sound is represented as a new character with influence from both 'ड and 'د' - A new '
r letter is assigned which also seems to have been fused from 'ड़' and 'ر' - Somali '
g in this case is written as 'گ' - A new l
' is introduced, with Sanskrit elements to form 'ڸ' - Finally, a new n
' is proposed with two dots above the standard Arabic 'ن'
In this article, he provided over 100 examples of the script in use, some of which include:
| King's script | Somali transliteration | English translation |
| مَنَبَدْبَ | Ma nabad ba | Are you well? |
| اَفكْي صومالئِيد كُهَدَل | Afkii Soomaaliyeed ku hadal | Speak in the Somali language |
| ادِگَ وَلي ارض الهندي مَتْگْتي | Adiga weli ard alhindiya ma tegtay? | Have you ever been to India? |