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 The International African Institute (IAI) was founded (as the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures - IIALC) in 1926 in London for the study of African languages. Frederick Lugard was the first chairman (1926 to his death in 194 ...

(IAI), was to enable people to write all the

African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...

for practical and scientific purposes 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 ''diacriti ...

s. It is based on 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 standardized representation ...

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.) Africa Since 1935 (UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. 8). University of California Press, 1993. P. 527.), but not all, and discussions of harmonization of systems of transcription that led to, among other things, adoption of the

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) ...

. The African Alphabet was used, with the International Phonetic Alphabet, as a basis for the World Orthography. Some of those IPA letters as Ɔ have been introduced in orthographies of several African languages, sometimes those languages read as IPA.

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References

*Coulmas, Florian, ''The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems'', 1996, Blackwell, Oxford *IIACL
''Practical Orthography of African Languages''
Revised Edition, London: Oxford University Press, 1930 *Sow, Alfa I., and Mohamed H. Abdulaziz, "Language and Social Change," Ch. 18 in Ali A. Mazrui (ed.) ''Africa Since 1935'' (UNESCO

General History of Africa The General History of Africa (GHA) is a two-phase project launched by UNESCO in 1964. The 1964 General Conference of UNESCO, during its 13th Session, instructed the Organization to undertake this initiative after the newly independent African Membe ...

, Vol. 8). University of California Press, 1993. Latin alphabets Writing systems of Africa Writing systems introduced in 1928 Orthography

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