The Word has been a long time in coming to the Tuareg, a nomadic tribe roaming the central and lower Sahara. The area's tribal dialect, Tamahaq, is written without vowels, and permits any word to be spelled forward, backward or inside out. Thus, in their alphabet, the Tuareg capital city of Tamanrasset can be written:
+ CM0+ or +0M3+, or even "£ ?-
Just about the only people who can write the language are members of the Tuareg's first families, and they usually develop writer's block once they have learned to set down their own names....
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