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Pan-Nigerian Alphabet
The Pan-Nigerian alphabet is a set of 33 Latin letters standardised by the National Language Centre of Nigeria in the 1980s. It is intended to be sufficient to write all the languages of Nigeria without using digraphs. History Several hundred different languages are spoken in Nigeria. The different Latin alphabets made the use of typewriters impractical. In the 1980s the National Language Centre (NLC) undertook to develop a single alphabet suitable for writing all the languages of the country and replacing use of Arabic script in some Nigerian languages that were proposed in the colonial era, taking as its starting point a model proposed by linguist Kay Williamson in 1981. The font family was developed in 1985-86 by Edward Oguejofor and Victor Manfredi, in co-operation with the NLC, with technical assistance from Hermann Zapf. Characters If a Unicode font is installed with the Pan-Nigerian glyphs, then a table, such as the one below, should be seen: The acute ( ´ ), gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa Alphabet
The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) was developed by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in 1928, with the help of some Africans led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann, who served as director of the organization from 1926 until 1939. Meanwhile, the aim of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, later known as International African Institute (IAI), was to enable people to write all the African languages for practical and scientific purposes without the need of diacritics. It is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet with a few differences, such as ''j'' (IPA ) and ''y'' (IPA ), which represent the same (consonant) sound values as in English. This alphabet has influenced development of orthographies of many African languages (serving "as the basis for the transcription" of about 60, by one countSow, Alfa I., and Mohamed H. Abdulaziz, "Language and Social Change," Ch. 18 in Ali A. Mazrui (ed.) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fula Language
Fula ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 30 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 18 countries in West and Central Africa. Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof, it belongs to the Atlantic geographic group within Niger–Congo, and more specifically to the Senegambian branch. Unlike most Niger-Congo languages, Fula does not have tones. It is spoken as a first language by the Fula people ("Fulani", ff, Fulɓe, link=no) from the Senegambia region and Guinea to Cameroon, Nigeria, and Sudan and by related groups such as the Toucouleur people in the Senegal River Valley. It is also spoken as a second language by various peoples in the region, such as the Kirdi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria. Nomenclature Several names are applied to the language, just as to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hausa Language
Hausa (; /; Ajami: ) is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people in the northern half of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern half of Niger, Chad and Sudan, with significant minorities in Ivory Coast. Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic languages, Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72 million. In Nigeria, the Hausa-speaking film industry is known as Hausa-language cinema, Kannywood. Classification Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. Geographic distribution Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in southern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa Alphabet
The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) was developed by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in 1928, with the help of some Africans led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann, who served as director of the organization from 1926 until 1939. Meanwhile, the aim of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, later known as International African Institute (IAI), was to enable people to write all the African languages for practical and scientific purposes without the need of diacritics. It is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet with a few differences, such as ''j'' (IPA ) and ''y'' (IPA ), which represent the same (consonant) sound values as in English. This alphabet has influenced development of orthographies of many African languages (serving "as the basis for the transcription" of about 60, by one countSow, Alfa I., and Mohamed H. Abdulaziz, "Language and Social Change," Ch. 18 in Ali A. Mazrui (ed.) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hook (diacritic)
In typesetting, the hook or tail is a diacritic mark attached to letters in many alphabets. In shape it looks like a hook and it can be attached below as a descender, on top as an ascender and sometimes to the side. The orientation of the hook can change its meaning: when it is below and curls to the left it can be interpreted as a palatal hook, and when it curls to the right is called hook tail or tail and can be interpreted as a retroflex hook. It should not be mistaken with the hook above, a diacritical mark used in Vietnamese, or the rhotic hook, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Letter Z with tophook — became letter , . Letter X with two high hooks — became letter . Letters with hook It could be argued that the hook was used to derive the letter J from the letter I, or the letter Eng (ŋ) from the letter N. However, these letters are usually not identified as being formed with the hook. Most letters with hook are used in the International Phonetic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Reference Alphabet
An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982. The conference recommended the use of single letters for a sound (that is, a phoneme) instead of using two or three-letter combinations, or letters with diacritical marks. The African Reference Alphabet is clearly related to the Africa Alphabet and reflected practice based on the latter (including use of IPA characters). The Niamey conference also built on work of a previous UNESCO-organized meeting on harmonization of transcriptions of African languages, that was held in Bamako, Mali, in 1966. 1978 version Separate versions of the conference's report were produced in English and French. Different images of the alphabet were used in the two versions, and there are a number of differences between the two. The English version proposed an alphabet of 57 letters, given in both upper and lower-case forms. Eight of these are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Extended B
Latin Extended-B is the fourth block (0180-024F) of the Unicode Standard. It has been included since version 1.0, where it was only allocated to the code points 0180-01FF and contained 113 characters. During unification with ISO 10646 for version 1.1, the block range was extended by 80 code points and another 35 characters were assigned. In version 3.0 and later, the last 60 available code points in the block were assigned. Its block name in Unicode 1.0 was Extended Latin. Character table Subheadings The Latin Extended-B block contains ten subheadings for groups of characters: Non-European and historic Latin, African letters for clicks, Croatian digraphs matching Serbian Cyrillic letters, Pinyin diacritic-vowel combinations, Phonetic and historic letters, Additions for Slovenian and Croatian, Additions for Romanian, Miscellaneous additions, Additions for Livonian, and Additions for Sinology. The Non-European and historic, African clicks, Croatian digraphs, Pinyin, and the first p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Implosive B
A voiced bilabial implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b_<. Features Features of the voiced bilabial implosive: Occurrence See also * Index of phonetics articles * Voiceless bilabial implosive A voiceless bilabial implosive is a rare consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based p ... * B̤ē Notes References * * * * * * * * * * * * External links * {{IPA navigation Bilabial consonants Implosives Voiced oral consonants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loma Language
Loma (Loghoma, Looma, Lorma) is a Mande language spoken by the Loma people of Liberia and Guinea. Dialects of Loma proper in Liberia are Gizima, Wubomei, Ziema, Bunde, Buluyiema. The dialect of Guinea, Toma (Toa, Toale, Toali, or , the Malinke name for ''Loma''), is an official regional language. In Liberia, the people and language are also known as "Bouze" (Busy, Buzi), which is considered offensive. Writing systems Today, Loma uses a Latin-based alphabet which is written from left to right. A syllabary saw limited use in the 1930s and 1940s in correspondence between Loma-speakers, but today has fallen into disuse. Sample The Lord's Prayer in Loma:Matthew 6:9-13 in ''Deʋe niinɛ'' ew Testament in Loma Monrovia Monrovia () is the capital city of the West African country of Liberia. Founded in 1822, it is located on Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic coast and as of the 2008 census had 1,010,970 residents, home to 29% of Liberia’s total population. As th ...: Bible ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetic Symbol Guide
The ''Phonetic Symbol Guide'' is a book by Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw that explains the histories and uses of the symbols of various phonetic transcription conventions. It was published in 1986, with a second edition in 1996, by the University of Chicago Press. Symbols include letters and diacritics of the International Phonetic Alphabet and Americanist phonetic notation, though not of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. The ''Guide'' was consulted by the International Phonetic Association when they established names and numerical codes for the International Phonetic Alphabet and was the basis for the characters of the TIPA set of phonetic fonts. Symbols in Unicode The symbols included in the 2nd edition of the ''Guide'' are as follows. All symbols that are not merely allographs and have been used by more than a single author are supported by Unicode. Those not found in Unicode are marked with an asterisk. : a ȧ ä ᶏ ɐ ɑ α ɒ ɒ̇ ɒ̈ ꭤ æ æ̇ æ̈ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fula Orthographies
The Fula language ( ff, Fulfulde, ''Pulaar'', or ''Pular'') is written primarily in the Latin script, but in some areas is still written in an older Arabic script called the Ajami script or in the recently invented Adlam script. Latin-based alphabets Background 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 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
