Tane Akamatsu escreveu:
> Martin:
>
> Are you saying that written English is the standard written form of Somali
> (hard to believe), or that the person was reading what was written in English
> and then almost simultaneously translating it into spoken Somali (difficult
> but not impossible)?
>
> Tane Akamatsu
>
> Martin Owen wrote:
>
> > (snip)...
> > My worst case scenario in written vs spoken forms was (is?) Somali. When I
> > worked for the Overseas Service of the BBC, I sometimes worked on the news
> > in Somali.
> >
> > I was handed the script in English, and the newsreader would read the
> > news in Somali from the same English paper I had in front of me.
> > Apparently there was no written form in Somali, so the standard written
> > form was English! A deeply interesting phenomenum
> >
> > Should I believe this story? I can not help think that Somali like Swahili
> > is close to Arabic and would have had an Arabic form.