The writing systems of Africa refer to the current and historical practice of

writing systems A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...

on the African continent, both indigenous and those introduced. Today, the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

is commonly encountered across Africa, especially in the Western, Central and Southern Africa regions. Arabic script is mainly used in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

and Ge'ez script is widely used in the Horn of Africa. Regionally and in some localities, other scripts may be of significant importance.

Indigenous writing systems

Ancient African orthographies

Ancient Egyptian

Perhaps the most famous African writing system is ancient

Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...

. These developed later into forms known as Hieratic,

Demotic Demotic may refer to: * Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language * Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language * Chữ Nôm, the demotic script for writing Vietnamese See also * * Demos (disa ...

and, through Phoenician and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, Coptic. The Coptic language is still used today as the

liturgical language A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Concept A sacr ...

in the

Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria The Coptic Orthodox Church ( cop, Ϯⲉⲕ̀ⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ⲛ̀ⲟⲣⲑⲟⲇⲟⲝⲟⲥ, translit=Ti.eklyseya en.remenkimi en.orthodoxos, lit=the Egyptian Orthodox Church; ar, الكنيسة القبطي� ...

and the Coptic Catholic Church of Alexandria. As mentioned above, the Bohairic dialect of Coptic is used currently in the Coptic Orthodox Church. Other dialects include

Sahidic Coptic (Bohairic Coptic: , ) is a language family of closely related dialects, representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language, and historically spoken by the Copts, starting from the third-century AD in Roman Egypt. Coptic ...

, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, Fayyumic, and Oxyrhynchite.

Ancient Meroitic

The Meroitic language and its writing system was used in

Meroë Meroë (; also spelled ''Meroe''; Meroitic: or ; ar, مرواه, translit=Meruwah and ar, مروي, translit=Meruwi, label=none; grc, Μερόη, translit=Meróē) was an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east ...

and the wider

Kingdom of Kush The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX grc, Κυς and Κυσι ; cop, ''Ecōš''; he, כּוּשׁ ''Kūš'') was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in wh ...

(in modern day Sudan) during the Meroitic period. It was used from 300 BCE to 400 CE.

Tifinagh

The

Tifinagh Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: or , ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuar ...

alphabet is still actively used to varying degrees in trade and modernized forms for writing of Berber languages (Tamazight, Tamashek, etc.) of the

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ar, الْمَغْرِب, al-Maghrib, lit=the west), also known as the Arab Maghreb ( ar, المغرب العربي) and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, ...

, Sahara, and Sahel regions (Savage 2008). Neo-Tifinagh is encoded in the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

range U+2D30 to U+2D7F, starting from version 4.1.0. There are 55 defined characters, but there are more characters being used than those defined. In ISO 15924, the code Tfng is assigned to Neo-Tifinagh.

Ge'ez

The

Geʽez script Geʽez ( gez, ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz, ) is a script used as an abugida (alphasyllabary) for several Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It originated as an ''abjad'' (co ...

is an

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...

that was created in Horn of Africa in the 8th-9th century BC for writing the

Geʽez language Geez (; ' , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main litur ...

. The script is used today in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

and Eritrea for Amharic,

Tigrinya (; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. History and literatur ...

, and several other languages. It is sometimes called ''Ethiopic'', and is known in Eritrea and Ethiopia as the ''fidel'' or ''abugida''. Geʽez or Ethiopic has been computerized and assigned

3.0 codepoints between U+1200 and U+137F (decimal 4608–4991), containing the basic syllable signs for

Geʽez Geez (; ' , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgi ...

, Amharic, and

, punctuation and numerals.

Nsibidi

Nsibidi Nsibidi (also known as nsibiri, nchibiddi or nchibiddy) is a system of symbols or proto-writing developed in what is now the far South of Nigeria. They are classified as pictograms, though there have been suggestions that some are logograms or sy ...

(also known as "nsibiri", "nchibiddi", and "nchibiddy") is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently an

ideographic An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiari ...

script, though there have been suggestions that it includes

logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...

elements. The symbols are at least several centuries old: early forms appeared on excavated pottery as well as what are most likely ceramic stools and headrests from the

Calabar Calabar (also referred to as Callabar, Calabari, Calbari and Kalabar) is the capital city of Cross River State, Nigeria. It was originally named Akwa Akpa, in the Efik language. The city is adjacent to the Calabar and Great Kwa rivers and c ...

region, with a range of dates from 400 (and possibly earlier, 2000 BC) to 1400 CE.

Adinkra

Adinkra is a set of symbols developed by the

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan * Central Tano languages, a language group ...

, used to represent concepts and aphorisms. Oral tradition attributes the origin of adinkra to Gyaman in modern-day

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

and Côte d'Ivoire. According to Kwame Anthony Appiah, they were one of the means for "supporting the transmission of a complex and nuanced body of practice and belief".

Adinkra iconography has been adapted into several segmental scripts, including * The

Adinkra Alphabet Adinkra may refer to * Adinkra symbols that represent concepts or aphorisms *Adinkra symbols (physics) In supergravity and supersymmetric representation theory, Adinkra symbols are a graphical representation of supersymmetric algebras. Mathemat ...

, invented by Charles Korankye in 2015, and expanded and refined over the next several years to accommodate various languages spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast such as Akan, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga- a process that culminated with the creation of a standardized font in 2020. * '' Adinkra Nkyea'', a writing system based on the Adinkra symbols.. Some Ghanaians use the Adinkra Nkyea writing system for the Akan Language and its dialects. A Majority of Adinkra Nkyea is derived from the original Adinkra Symbols. Adinkra Nkyea contains some 39 characters, ten numerals, and three punctuation marks. Karaktars

Lusona

Lusona is a system of ideograms that functioned as mnemonic devices to record proverbs, fables, games, riddles and animals, and to transmit knowledge. They originate in what is now eastern

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

, northwestern

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...

and adjacent areas of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

Modern orthographies

East Africa

* The Luo script was developed to write Dholuo in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi ...

in 2009.

* Somalia: Writing systems developed in the twentieth century for transcribing Somali include the

Osmania Osmania University is a collegiate university, collegiate Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Mir Osman Ali Khan, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad in 1918 , He released a farma ...

, Borama and Kaddare alphabets, which were invented by

Osman Yusuf Kenadid Osman Yusuf Kenadid ( so, Cusmaan Yuusuf Keenadiid; ar, عثمان يوسف كيناديد; 1889 – 14 August 1972) was a Somali poet, writer, teacher and ruler. Born in Ceel Huur in 1889, he went on to create the Osmanya alphabet for writing ...

, Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare, respectively. The Osmanya script is today available in the Unicode range 10480-104AF rom U+10480 - U+104AF (66688–66735) * An alphasyllabic script for Oromo in Ethiopia was invented in the late 1950s by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (1895-1980), and saw limited use.Hayward and Hassan
"The Oromo Orthography of Shaykh Bakri Saṗalō", ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies''
44 (1981), p. 551

Southern Africa

* In

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number o ...

, the

Mwangwego alphabet The Mwangwego script is an abugida writing system developed for Malawian languages and other African Bantu languages by linguist Nolence Mwangwego in 1977. It is one of several indigenous scripts invented for local language communities in Africa. ...

is used to write Malawian languages. * IsiBheqe SoHlamvu (Bheqe Syllabary), also known as ''

Ditema tsa Dinoko Ditema tsa Dinoko ( Sesotho for "Ditema syllabary"), also known by its IsiZulu name, ''Isibheqe Sohlamvu'', and various other related names in different languages, is a constructed writing system (specifically, a featural syllabary) for the '' ...

'', is a featural syllabary used to write Southern Bantu languages.

Central Africa

* The Eghap script was used by the Bagam ( Tuchscherer 1999, Rovenchak 2009) of

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

* The Mandombe script was invented by Wabeladio Payi in 1978 in what is now

Kongo Central Kongo Central ( kg, Kongo dia Kati ), formerly Bas-Congo is one of the 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Matadi. History At the time of independence, the area now encompassing Kongo Central was part of the ...

province,

. It is promoted by the

Kimbanguist Church , native_name_lang = , image = Simon Kibangu.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Simon Kimbangu , abbreviation = , type = New christian religious movement ...

and used for writing

Kikongo Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Angola. It is a tonal language. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from th ...

, Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili, and other languages. * Zaghawa (Beria) of Darfur and Chad, developed by Siddick Adam Issa from an earlier proposal by schoolteacher Adam Tajir based on traditional livestock brands.

West Africa

There are various other writing systems native to

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...

and

Central Africa Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo ...

. In the last two centuries, a large variety of writing systems have been created in Africa (Dalby 1967, 1968, 1969). Some are still in use today, while others have been largely displaced by non-African writing such as the Arabic script and the

. Below are non-Latin and non-Arabic-based writing systems used to write various languages of Africa: * The Adlam alphabet developed for writing the Fula language, taught mostly in Guinea but has also been spread in neighboring countries like

Senegal Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 ...

and Gambia. * The Ba script, named for its creator Adama Ba, used to write Fula. * Bamum (Bamun; also Shumom), a system of pictographic writing invented beginning in the late 19th century by Sultan Ibrahim Njoya for writing the

Bamun language Bamum (Shü Pamom "language of the Bamum", or ''Shümom'' "Mum language"), also spelled Bamun or in its French spelling Bamoun, is an Eastern Grassfields language of Cameroon, with approximately 420,000 speakers. The language is well known for i ...

in what is now

. It quickly developed into a syllabary. It is rarely used today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists. *

Bassa alphabet Bassa Vah, also known as simply ''vah'' ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabetic script for writing the Bassa language of Liberia. It was invented by . Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1 ...

of Liberia * Bété syllabary of Ivory Coast * Dita, used to write Fula. * The

Garay alphabet The Garay alphabet was designed in 1961, as a transcription system " arryingAfrican sociolinguistic characteristics" according to its inventor, Assane Faye. This alphabet has 25 consonants and 14 vowels.Wolof and Mandinka in

and

The Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...

* Gola Script for Liberia and eastern

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

. * Several Hausa language#Other systems, scripts used for the Hausa language * Kpelle syllabary of Liberia and Guinea Nko-large

* Loma syllabary of Liberia and Guinea * Masaba, a syllabary invented by Woyo Couloubayi (c.1910-1982) in the early 1930s for the Bambara language of Mali. *

Medefaidrin Medefaidrin (Medefidrin), or ', is a constructed language and script created as a Christian sacred language by an Ibibio congregation in 1930s Nigeria. It has its roots in glossolalia ('speaking in tongues'). History Speakers consider Medefa ...

of the Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ Church for Ibibio people. * The Mende Ki-ka-ku or KiKaKui syllabary, invented by Kisimi Kamara in

in the early 20th century. It is still used. * N'Ko script, N'Ko, invented in 1949 by Solomana Kante in Guinea, primarily for the

Manding languages The Manding languages (sometimes spelt Manden) are a dialect continuum within the Mande language family spoken in West Africa. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exp ...

. It is apparently in increasing use in

, including some efforts to adapt it to other languages (Wyrod 2008). * The Nwagu Aneke syllabary invented in the 1950s for the

Igbo language Igbo ( , ; Igbo: ''Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò'' ) is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, a meta-ethnicity from Southeastern Nigeria. The number of Igboid languages depends on how one classifies a language versus a dialect, so ...

of southeastern

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. * The

Vai syllabary The Vai syllabary is a syllabic writing system devised for the Vai language by Momolu Duwalu Bukele of Jondu, in what is now Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia. Bukele is regarded within the Vai community, as well as by most scholars, as the s ...

invented by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ for the Vai language in what is now Liberia during the early 19th century. It is still used today. * Vah, or Bassa Vah for the Bassa of Liberia. * Yoruba Holy Writing for the texts of the

Yoruba religion The Yoruba religion (Yoruba: Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), or Isese, comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria, which comprises the majority of Oyo, Og ...

Introduced and adapted writing systems

Most written scripts, including Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, were based on previous written scripts and the origin of the history of the alphabet is ultimately Egyptian Hieroglyphs, through Proto-Sinaitic or Old Canaanite. Many other indigenous African scripts were similarly developed from previous scripts.

Phoenician/Punic

The

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...

ns from what is now Lebanon traded with North Africans and founded cities there, the most famous being

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the cla ...

. The

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician a ...

is thought to be the origin of many others, including: Arabic, Greek, and Latin. The Carthaginian dialect is called Punic. Today's

is thought by some scholars to be descended from Punic, but this is still under debate. Additionally, the Proto-Sinaitic Wadi el-Hol inscriptions indicate the presence of an extremely early form of the script in central Egypt (near the modern city of Qena) in the early

2nd millennium BC The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 BC to 1001 BC. In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age. The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era: The first half of the mil ...

Greek

The

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as w ...

was adapted in Egypt to the Coptic alphabet (with the addition of 7 letters derived from ancient

) in order to write the

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

(which is today only a liturgical language of the Coptic Church). An uncial variant of the Coptic alphabet was used from the 8th to the 15th century for writing

Old Nubian Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughou ...

, an ancient variety of the Nubian language.

Arabic

The Arabic script was introduced into Africa by the spread of Islam and by trade. Apart from its obvious use for the

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

, it has been adapted for a number of other languages over the centuries. The Arabic script is still used in some of these cases, but not in others. It was often necessary to modify the script to accommodate sounds not represented in the script as used for the Arabic language. The adapted form of the script is also called

Ajami ''Ajam'' ( ar, عجم, ʿajam) is an Arabic word meaning mute, which today refers to someone whose mother tongue is not Arabic. During the Arab conquest of Persia, the term became a racial pejorative. In many languages, including Persian, Tu ...

, especially in the Sahel, and sometimes by specific names for individual languages, such as Wolofal, Sorabe, and Wadaad writing. Despite the existence of a widely known and well-established script in Ethiopia and Eritrea there are a few cases where Muslims in Ethiopia and Eritrea have used the Arabic script, instead, for reasons of religious identity. There are no official standard forms or orthographies, though local usage follows traditional practice for the area or language. There was an effort by ISESCO to standardize Ajami usage. Some critics believe this relied too much on Perso-Arabic script forms and not enough on existing use in Africa. In any event, the effect of that standardization effort has been limited.

Latin

The first systematic attempts to adapt the

to African languages were probably those of Christian missionaries on the eve of European colonization (Pasch 2008). These however were isolated, done by people without linguistic training, and sometimes resulted in competing systems for the same or similar languages. One of the challenges in adapting the Latin script to many African languages was the use in those tongues of sounds unfamiliar to Europeans and thus without writing convention they could resort to. Various use was made of letter combinations, modifications, and diacritics to represent such sounds. Some resulting orthographies, such as the Yoruba writing system established by the late 19th century, have remained largely intact. In many cases, the colonial regimes had little interest in the writing of African languages, but in others they did. In the case of

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

in Northern Nigeria, for instance, the colonial government was directly involved in determining the written forms for the language. Since the colonial period, there have been efforts to propose and promulgate standardized or at least harmonized approaches to using the Latin script for African languages. Examples include the Standard Alphabet by Lepsius (mid-19th century) and the Africa Alphabet of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (1928, 1930). Following independence there has been continued attention to the transcription of African languages. In the 1960s and 1970s,

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

facilitated several "expert meetings" on the subject, including a seminal meeting in Bamako in 1966, and one in Niamey in 1978. The latter produced the African reference alphabet. Various country-level standardizations have also been made or proposed, such as the Pan-Nigerian alphabet. A Berber Latin alphabet for northern Berber includes extended Latin characters and two Greek letters. Such discussions continue, especially on more local scales regarding cross-border languages.

Hebrew

There has been a Jewish presence in North Africa for millennia, with communities speaking a variety of different languages. Though some of these are written with the Arabic script (as is the case with Judeo-Tunisian Arabic) or with Ge'ez (as with Kayla and Qwara), many- including

Haketia Haketia ( he, חַכִּיתִּיָה; ar, حاكيتيا; es, Haquetía) (also written as Hakitia or Haquitía) is an endangered Jewish Romance language also known as ''Djudeo Spañol'', ''Ladino Occidental'', or Western Judaeo-Spanish. ...

and several forms of Judeo-Arabic- have made frequent or exclusive use of the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...

Braille

Braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...

, a tactile script widely used by the visually impaired, has been adapted to write several African languages- including those of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

and

Office/computer technology, fonts and standards

Typewriters

There is not much information on the adaptation of typewriters to African language needs (apart from Arabic, and the African languages that do not use any modified Latin letters). There were apparently some typewriters fitted with keys for typing

n languages. There was at least one

IBM Selectric typewriter The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961. Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the peri ...

"typeball" developed for some African languages (including

Fula Fula may refer to: *Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe) *Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani) **The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language **The Fula variety known as the Pular language **The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde *Al-Fula ...

). Around 1930, the English typewriter was modified by Ayana Birru of Ethiopia to type an incomplete and ligated version of the Amharic alphabet. The 1982 proposal for a

unicase A unicase or unicameral alphabet has just one case for its letters. Arabic, Brahmic scripts like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic), Hebrew, Iberian, Georgian, and Hangul are unicase writing systems, while (mod ...

version of the African reference alphabet made by Michael Mann and David Dalby included a suggested typewriter adaptation. Now type writers have been modified to type Tigrigna and Tigrayt languages which are the closest to Geez as well.

Early computing and fonts

With early desktop computers it was possible to modify existing 8-bit Latin fonts to accommodate specialized character needs. This was done without any kind of system or standardization, meaning incompatibility of encodings. Similarly, there were diverse efforts (successful, but not standardized) to enable use of Ethiopic-Eritrean /Ge'ez on computers.

Current standards

There was never any

ISO 8859 ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12. ...

standard for any native African languages. One standard – ISO 6438 for bibliographic purposes – was adopted but apparently little used (curiously, although this was adopted at about the same time as the African reference alphabet, there were some differences between the two, indicating perhaps a lack of communication between efforts to harmonize transcription of African languages and the

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

standards process).

in principle resolves the issue of incompatible encoding, but other questions such as the handling of diacritics in extended Latin scripts are still being raised. These in turn relate to fundamental decisions regarding orthographies of African languages. In recent years,

Osmanya The Osmanya script ( so, Farta Cismaanya 𐒍𐒖𐒇𐒂𐒖 𐒋𐒘𐒈𐒑𐒛𐒒𐒕𐒖), also known as Far Soomaali (𐒍𐒖𐒇 𐒘𐒝𐒈𐒑𐒛𐒘, "Somali writing") and, in Arabic, as ''al-kitābah al-ʿuthmānīyah'' (الكتا ...

, Bamum, Adlam, Bassa Vah,

, and N'Ko have been added to Unicode, as have individual characters to other ranges of languages used, such as Latin and Arabic. Efforts to encode African scripts, including minority scripts and major historical writing systems like

, are being coordinated by the Script Encoding Initiative.

Notes

References

* CISSE, Mamadou. 2006. ''Ecrits et écritures en Afrique de l'Ouest''. Sudlangues n°6. http://www.sudlangues.sn/spip.php?article101 * Dalby, David. 1967. A survey of the indigenous scripts of Liberia and Sierra Leone: Vai, Mende, Kpelle, and Bassa. ''African Language Studies'' 8:1-51. * Dalby, David. 1968. The indigenous scripts of West Africa and Surinam: their inspiration and design. ''African Language Studies'' 9:156-197. * Dalby, David. 1969. Further indigenous scripts of West Africa: Manding, Wolof, and Fula alphabets and Yoruba holy-writing. ''African Language Studies'' 10:161-191 * Mafundikwa, Saki. 2004. ''Afrikan alphabets: the story of writing in Afrika''. West New York, NJ: Mark Batty. * Hayward, Richard J. and Mohammed Hassan. 1981. The Oromo Orthography of Shaykh Bakri Sapalo. ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' 44.3:550-556. * Pasch, Helma. 2008. Competing scripts: the introduction of the Roman alphabet in Africa. ''International Journal for the Sociology of Language'' 191:65-109. * Savage, Andrew. 2008. Writing Tuareg — the three script options. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' 192: 5-14. * Tuchscherer, Konrad. 1999
The lost script of the Bagam. ''African Affairs''
98:55-77. * Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of scripts in West Africa for ethnic revitalization. In ''The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts'', (Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Volume 2.), ed. by

Joshua A. Fishman Joshua Fishman (Yiddish: שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity. ...

and Ofelia García, pp. 23–32. New York: Oxford University Press. * Unseth, Peter. 2016. The international impact of Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary. ''Written Language & Literacy'' 19(1), pp. 75–93. he impact of Cherokee to Vai and then Vai on others in W. Africa* Wyrod, Christopher. 2008. A social orthography of identity: the N’ko literacy movement in West Africa. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' 192:27-44.

External links

Scripts of Africa
*
Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines
* {{in lang, ru}