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African Reference Alphabet
The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal (one in English and a second in French) were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger. They were based on the results of several earlier conferences on the harmonization of established Latin alphabets of individual languages. The 1978 conference recommended the use of single letters for speech sounds rather than of Digraph (orthography), letter sequences or of letters with diacritics. A substantial overhaul was proposed in 1982 but was rejected in a follow-up conference held in Niamey in 1984. Since then, continent-wide harmonization has been largely abandoned, because regional needs, practices and thus preferences differ greatly across Africa. Through the individual languages that were its basis, the African Reference Alphabet inherits from the Africa Alphabet, and like the latter uses ...
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Latin Alphabets
The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to represent a wide range of orthographic traditions, without regard to whether or how they are sequenced in their alphabet or the table. Parentheses indicate characters not used in modern standard orthographies of the languages, but used in obsolete and/or dialectal forms. Letters contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet Alphabets that contain only ISO basic Latin letters Among alphabets for natural languages the English, 6/sup> Indonesian, and Malay alphabets only use the 26 letters in both cases. Among alphabets for constructed languages the Ido and Interlingua alphabets only use the 26 letters, while Toki Pona uses a 14-letter subset. Extended by ligatures * German (ß), Scandinavian (æ) Extended by diacritical marks * ...
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Caron
A caron or háček ( ), is a diacritic mark () placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term ''caron'', while linguists prefer the Czech word '. The symbol is common in the Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Samic and Berber language families. Its use differs according to the orthographic rules of a language. In most Slavic and other European languages it indicates present or historical palatalization (e → ě; [] → []), iotation, or postalveolar consonant, postalveolar articulation (c → č; → ). In Salishan languages, it often represents a uvular consonant (x → x̌; [] → ). When placed over vowel symbols, the caron can indicate a contour tone, for instance the falling and then rising tone in the Pinyin romanization of Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese. It is also used to decorate symbols in mathematics, where it is often pronounced ("check"). The caro ...
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Latin Uppercase Alpha
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, including English, having contributed many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, the sciences, medicine, and law. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had evolved into standardized Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin refers to the less prestigious colloquial registers, attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius. While often ...
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Latin Alpha
Latin alpha (majuscule: Ɑ, minuscule: ɑ), script a, or single-story a is a letter of the Latin alphabet based on a handwritten form of lowercase a, and which is commonly typeset with the Greek lowercase alpha (α). Usage Although is normally just an allograph of , there are instances in which the two letters are distinguished: * In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents an open back unrounded vowel, while represents an open front unrounded vowel. It has the shape of a script-a. * Also in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages, usually represents an open back unrounded vowel, while represents an open front unrounded vowel. The former is used in the orthographies of several languages of Cameroon, including: ** Feʼfeʼ ** Mbembe ** Mbo (?): but not Akoose, though it does have phonemes /aa/ and /ɑɑ/; nor Bakaka. ** in some languages, the script-a form (also called literacy form) of the letter , with the lowercase much like the IPA , is used and should n ...
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Latin Theta
Latin theta (uppercase: , lowercase: θ) is an additional letter of the Latin script, based on the lowercase letter theta from the Greek alphabet. It is used in Cypriot Arabic, Gros Ventre, Comox, Fox, Thompson, Tuscarora, Halkomelem, Wakhi, Yavapai, Havasupai–Hualapai, and Romani. It also historically was used in the Lepsius Standard Alphabet. Usage The letter appears in the International Standard Alphabet of the Romani language, where it represents the voiceless alveolar plosive ( when placed after a vowel, and the voiced alveolar plosive ( when placed after a nasal consonant.Hancock, Ian. ''A Handbook of Vlax Romani'' In the Gros Ventre, Fox, and Comox languages, it represents the voiceless dental fricative ( � sound. It was used in the Lepsius Standard Alphabet created for transcription of Egyptian hieroglyphs and African languages. In it, it represented the voiceless dental fricative The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonan ...
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Esh (letter)
Esh (majuscule: Ʃ, minuscule: ʃ) is a character used in phonology to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English , as in ''"ship"''). In Unicode, these letters are encoded as and Form, usage, and history Its lowercase form is similar to an integral sign or a long s with an extra leftward hook at the bottom; in 1928 the Africa Alphabet borrowed the Greek letter sigma for the uppercase form . The lowercase form was introduced by Isaac Pitman in his 1847 Phonotypic Alphabet to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English ''sh''). It is not common around African languages, but it is, in fact, used in some, for example, Serer uses its lowercase form to make the [] consonant. This letter is used as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses to represent a Voiceless postalveolar fricative, voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant. Related Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phoneti ...
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Eng (letter)
Eng, agma, or engma (Letter case, capital: Ŋ, Letter case, lowercase: ŋ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a voiced velar nasal (as in English ''sii'') in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In Washo language, Washo, lower-case represents a typical sound, while upper-case represents a Voicelessness, voiceless sound. This convention comes from Americanist phonetic notation. History The ''First Grammatical Treatise'', a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Icelandic language, uses a single grapheme for the eng sound, shaped like a g with a stroke . Alexander Gill the Elder uses an uppercase G with a hooked tail and a lowercase n with the hooked tail of a script g for the same sound in ''Logonomia Anglica'' in 1619. William Holder uses the letter in ''Elements of Speech: An Essay of Inquiry into the Natural Production of Letters'', published in 1669, but it was not printed as intended; he indicates in his ...
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Latin Gamma
The Latin letter gamma, Ɣ (minuscule: ɣ), is a letter used in some orthographies based on the Latin alphabet. Its shape, in uppercase and lowercase, is based on the lowercase shape of the Greek letter gamma (γ). Unlike the Greek gamma, the Latin gamma may have serifs. Latin gamma is used to represent a voiced velar fricative, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and in the alphabets of several African languages such as Yom, Dagbani, Dinka, Kabiyé, and Ewe, some Berber languages using the Berber Latin alphabet, and sometimes in the romanization of Pashto. It is also used in the Wakhi language's Latin alphabet. Lowercase Latin gamma is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the voiced velar fricative. A lowercase Latin gamma that lies above the baseline rather than crossing it (, called "ram's horns"), represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, us ...
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African Reference Alphabet As Presented 1978 On The Niamey Meeting (English)
African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** List of ethnic groups of Africa *** Demographics of Africa *** African diaspora ** African, an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to the African Union ** Citizenship of the African Union ** Demographics of the African Union **Africanfuturism ** African art ** *** African jazz (other) ** African cuisine ** African culture ** African languages ** African music ** African Union ** African lion, a lion population in Africa Books and radio * ''The African'' (essay), a story by French author J. M. G. Le Clézio * ''The African'' (Conton novel), a novel by William Farquhar Conton * ''The African'' (Courlander novel), a novel by Harold Courlander * ''The Africans'' (radio program) Music * "African", a song by Pete ...
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Overdot
When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot refers to the glyphs "combining dot above" (, and "combining dot below" ( which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in a variety of languages. Similar marks are used with other scripts. Overdot Language scripts or transcription schemes that use the dot above a letter as a diacritical mark: * In some forms of Arabic romanization, stands for ''ghayn'' (غ). * The Latin orthography for Chechen includes ''ċ'', ''ç̇'', ''ġ'', ''q̇'' and ''ẋ'', corresponding to Cyrillic ''цӏ'', ''чӏ'', ''гӏ'', ''къ'' and ''хь'' and representing , , , and respectively. * Traditional Irish typography, where the dot denotes lenition, and is called a or "dot of lenition": ''ḃ ċ ḋ ḟ ġ ṁ ṗ ṡ ṫ''. Alternatively, lenition may be represented by a following letter ''h'', thus: ''bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th''. In Old Irish orthography, the dot was used only for ''ḟ ṡ'', while the follo ...
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