Fula alphabets

The Fula language (Fula: Fulfulde, Pulaar, or Pular) is written primarily in the Latin script,^[1] but in some areas is still written in an older Arabic script called the Ajami script or in the recently invented Adlam script.

The Latin script was introduced to Fula-speaking regions of West and Central Africa by Europeans during, and in some cases immediately before, invasion. Various people — missionaries, colonial administrators, and scholarly researchers — devised various ways of writing . One issue similar to other efforts by Europeans to use their alphabet and home orthographic conventions was how to write African languages with unfamiliar sounds. In the case of Fula, these included how to represent sounds such as the implosive b and d, the ejective y, the velar n (the latter being present in European languages, but never in initial position), prenasalised consonants, and long vowels, all of which can change meaning.

Major influences on the current forms used for writing Fula were decisions made by colonial administrators in Northern Nigeria and the Africa Alphabet. Post independence African governments decided to retain the Latin alphabet as the basis for transcribing their languages. Various writers in Fula, such as Amadou Hampate Ba and Alfa Ibrahim Sow, wrote and published in this script.

Major UNESCO-sponsored conferences on harmonising Latin-based African language orthographies in Bamako in 1966 and Niamey in 1978 confirmed standards for writing Fula. Nevertheless, orthographies for the language and its variants are determined at the country level. So while Fula writing uses basically the same character sets and rules across the region, there are some minor variations.

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Some general rules:

• Vowels
  • Long vowels are doubled
  • Two different vowels are never used together
• Consonants
  • To accentuate a consonant, double the consonant (or write ⟨'⟩ before the consonant; e.g., "temmeere" = "te'meere".^{[citation needed]})

Language and orthographic policies in Africa are determined at a national level. Each nation's goal has been to have an orthographic convention that would be applicable to all indigenous languages of each respective country. As Fula language is a language spoken over a vast area, in multiple countries, this has resulted in a variety of orthographic conventions in Latin Alphabet (and Arabic Script as well) in writing of Fula language.

The dominant Fula accent in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania is referred to as Pulaar Fuuta Tooro. Its Latin alphabet has been standardized in various Senegalese government decrees, the latest of which was issued in 2005.^[2]

The dominant Fula accent in Guinea is referred to as Pular Fuuta Jalon. Following independence, the government of Guinea adopted rules of transcription for the languages of Guinea based on the characters and diacritic combinations available on typewriters of that period. The Guinean languages alphabet was used officially for indigenous languages of Guinea, including Pular until 1989.

In 1989, following a meeting on reform of the alphabet in 1988,^[4] it was decided to adopt an orthography similar to the African reference alphabet used elsewhere in the region.^[5][6][7]

The pre-1989 alphabet was based on the simple Latin alphabet with digraphs for the sounds particular to Pular as opposed to unique letters. This alphabet is still used by some Pular speakers (in part because it can be typed using commercial keyboards).

• a, b, ɓ, c, d, ɗ, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, mb, n, nd, ng, nj, ŋ, ñ, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y, ƴ, ʼ

The dominant Fula accent in Mali is referred to as Maasina Fulfulde. Its Latin alphabet was standardized in 1967, and it consists of 32 letters.

A common Latin alphabet is used in Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso is used for writing of Fulfulde dialects in this region. The dialect spoken in Cameroon and Western Nigeria is Adamawa Fulfulde. The dialect spoken in much of Northern and Central Nigeria (Hausaland) is Nigerian Fulfulde. The dialects spoken in Northern Hausaland in Niger are Eastern (Lettugal) and Western (Gorgal) Niger Fulfulde. The Latin alphabet consists of 39 letters, including digraphs and apostrophe.

The dominant Fulfulde dialect in Chad and Central African Republic, close to Adamawa Fulfulde, is Bagirmi Fulfulde. In 2009, the Chadian government standardized both Latin and Ajami scripts for all indigenous languages of the country, including Bagirmi Fulfulde, in what is known as Chadian National Alphabet.^[11][12][13]

The Arabic script was introduced into the West African Sahel with Islam several centuries before European colonization. As was the case with other languages such as Hausa, Muslim Fulas who went through Koranic education adapted the script to writing their language. This practice, followed some patterns of customary use and well-established traditions in various regions. These usages differ on some details, mainly on how to represent certain consonants and vowels not present in the Arabic language.

In recent decades, albeit at a slower pace than Fula Latin orthography, there has been conferences, seminars, and attempts by linguists and literaturists in various countries to standardize the Arabic (Ajami) script. The defining feature of the tradition of Ajami script in Sub-Saharan Africa, is that whereas in Arabic (and many other languages whose script has been derived from Arabic), vowel diacritics are generally dropped unless an ambiguity needs to be clarified, vowel diacritics are always written.

The dominant Fula accent in Cameroon (Adamawa Region) and Nigeria (Adamawa State) is referred to as Adamawa Fulfulde. the writing conventions of writing in the Arabic script for Adamawa Fulfulde were generally agreed upon and standardized by the 1990s.^[14]

The dominant Fulfulde dialect in Chad and Central African Republic, close to Adamawa Fulfulde, is Bagirmi Fulfulde. In 2009, the Chadian government standardized both Latin and Ajami scripts for all indigenous languages of the country, including Bagirmi Fulfulde, in what is known as Chadian National Alphabet.^[11]

The dominant Fula accent in Guinea is referred to as Pular Fuuta Jalon. Its Arabic alphabet, despite popular usage and widespread teaching, has never been standardized. A single Arabic letter can correspond to multiple Latin letters and digraphs. Some authors do use small dots and markings to denote a different pronunciation. For example, in a Pular text, one may see the letter ba with three small dots 'بۛ‎' to indicate a [ɓ] or [p] pronunciation instead of a [b] pronunciation.^[16]

The dominant Fula accent in Mali is referred to as Maasina Fulfulde. Its Arabic alphabet was standardized in 1987, following a UNESCO conference on the topic in Bamako, the capital city of Mali.^[17][15]

In Northern and Northwestern Nigeria, a dialect of Fula, referred to as Nigerian Fulfulde is spoken by Fula people. The Arabic script for this dialect has not been standardized by any governmental entity. However, this region has centuries of literary tradition. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, certain adaptations to the Arabic alphabet have come to be common in different Fula documents.^[18] This includes a Fulfulde translation of the Bible as well.^[19]

The dominant Fula accent in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania is referred to as Pulaar Fuuta Tooro. The Arabic-based script of Pulaar was set by the government as well, between 1985 and 1990, although never adopted by a decree, as the effort by the Senegalese ministry of education was to be part of a multi-national standardization effort.^[20]

Several alphabets have been devised to write Fulfulde in the sixties, in Mali, in Senegal, in Nigeria, and in Guinea. During the late 1980s an alphabetic script was devised by the teenaged brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, in order to represent the Fulani language.^[21][22] After several years of development it started to be widely adopted among Fulani communities, and is currently taught in Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia and other nearby countries. The name adlam is an acronym derived from the first four letters of the alphabet (A, D, L, M), standing for Alkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol ("the alphabet that protects the peoples from vanishing"). There are Android apps to send SMS in adlam and to learn the alphabet.^[23] On computers running Microsoft Windows, the adlam script is natively supported as part of the upcoming feature update of Windows 10 version 1903 (codenamed 19H1) build 18252.^[24]

The extended Latin characters used in the Latin transcription of Fula were incorporated since an early version of the Unicode Standard. At least some of the extended Arabic characters used in Ajami are also in the Unicode standard. The Adlam alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2016 with the release of version 9.0.^[22]

There has been at least one effort to adapt the N'Ko alphabet to the Pular language of Guinea. In the late 1960s, David Dalby recorded two additional scripts- the Dita script created by Oumar Dembélé (or Dambele) of Bamako, and another script created by Adama Ba. Dita was influenced by the traditional iconography of various Malian communities, while Ba's system is a cursive script which Dalby compares to the handwritten Latin alphabet. Both scripts were alphabetic in nature, and in the face of disapproval from officials who favored the promotion of Latin-script literacy, neither had seen widespread adoption as of 1969.^[25]