The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) is a set of letters designed as the basis for

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 represe ...

for the

languages of Africa The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

. It was initially developed in 1928 by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures from a combination of the

English alphabet Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 Letter (alphabet), letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word ''alphabet'' is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ''alpha'' and ''beta'', t ...

and the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

(IPA). Development was assisted by native speakers of African languages and led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann, who served as director of the organization from 1926 to 1939. The aim of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, later renamed the International African Institute (IAI), was to enable people to write for practical and scientific purposes in all African languages without the need of

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s. The Africa Alphabet influenced the development of orthographies of many African languages, serving "as the basis for the transcription" of about 60 by one count. Discussion of how to harmonize these with other systems led to several largely abortive proposals such as the

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-organi ...

and the

World Orthography The World Orthography (WO) is an alphabet and transcription system based on the Africa Alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet. In Daniel Jones’s 1948 ''Difference between Spoken and Written Language'', an adaptation of WO for English ...

Overview

The Africa Alphabet was built from the

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

letters of the English alphabet and the

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

letters, and any additional consonants, of the IPA. Capital forms of IPA letters were invented as necessary. Thus J and Y are pronounced and as in English, while Ɔ, Ɛ and Ŋ are pronounced , and as in the IPA.

Characters

Notes

References

* * *{{cite encyclopedia , last1=Sow , first1=Alfa I. , last2=Abdulaziz , first2=Mohamed H. , title=Language and Social Change , editor-first=Ali A. , editor-last=Mazrui , volume=8 , encyclopedia=

General History of Africa The ''General History of Africa'' (GHA) is a two-phase project launched by UNESCO in 1964, producing a volume history of Africa first published in 1981 up to the present. The 1964 General Conference of UNESCO, during its 13th Session, instructed ...

, publisher=University of California Press , year=1993 Latin alphabets Writing systems of Africa Writing systems introduced in 1928 Orthography

Overview

Characters

See also

Notes

References