Following independence, the government of

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

adopted rules of transcription for the languages of Guinea based on the characters and diacritic combinations available on typewriters of that period. This alphabet was used officially until 1989.

Guinea language orthography

The Guinea alphabet made use of several digraphs (including either "h" or "y" as the second letter), some of which represent consonants not present in European languages, and two

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 (

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...

and diaeresis) for open vowels. This system was widely used within the country but differed from the orthographies of neighboring countries of West Africa, as developed in the wake of the 1966 Bamako expert meeting on harmonizing orthographies of the

cross-border language A cross-border language or trans-border language is a language spoken by a population (an ethnic group or nation) that lives in a geographical area in two or several internationally recognized countries that have common land or maritime borders. T ...

s of the region. In 1989, following a meeting on reform of the alphabet in 1988, it was decided to adopt an orthography similar to the African reference alphabet used elsewhere in the region.Effectuated by decree 019/PRG/SGG/89 A summary table of the digraphs and diacritics of the old alphabet, and their extended Latin equivalents in the new system, follows: :

References

* Latin alphabets Writing systems of Africa Multilingual orthographies 1989 disestablishments in Africa {{Latin-script-stub