The Somali Latin alphabet is an official writing script in the Federal Republic of Somalia and its constituent Federal Member States. It was developed by a number of leading scholars of

Somali Somali may refer to: Horn of Africa * Somalis, an inhabitant or ethnicity associated with Greater Somali Region ** Proto-Somali, the ancestors of modern Somalis ** Somali culture ** Somali cuisine ** Somali language, a Cushitic language ** Somali ...

, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal,

B. W. Andrzejewski Bogumił Witalis "Goosh" Andrzejewski (1922–1994) was a Polish-born, British-naturalised linguist whose research focused on the Somali language Somali (Latin script: ; Wadaad: ; Osmanya: 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 ) is an Afroasia ...

and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the

Somali language Somali (Latin script: ; Wadaad: ; Osmanya: 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 ) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in Greater Somalia and the Somali diaspora. Somali is an ...

, and is based on 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 ...

. The Somali Latin

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet with the exception of ''p'', ''v'' and ''z''. There are no

diacritics 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 ...

or other special characters, although it includes three consonant digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked and a word-initial

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

is also not shown.H.I. Galaal, pp. 4-11 Capital letters are used for names and at the beginning of a sentence.

Form

The Somali Latin alphabet is largely

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

, with

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

having a one-to-one correspondence between

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...

s and

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel. However, the distinction between tense and lax vowels is not represented.

Diphthongs A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

are represented using Y or W as the second element (AY, AW, EY, OY and OW) and long diphthongs are shown with the first vowel doubled. As there is no central regulation of the language, there is some variation in orthography, the endings -ay and -ey being particularly interchangeable. The Somali Latin alphabet, which follows an

Arabic 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; Walter ...

-based order, is seen in the following table. The letters' names (with their

equivalents) are spelt out in the following table. The Somali alphabet lacks equivalents of the Arabic letters thā’ (), dhal (), zāy (), ṣād (), ḍād (), and ṭā’ (). The following elements of the Somali alphabet either are not

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

symbols in their lower case versions, or else have values divergent from IPA symbols: *J – *X – *KH – *SH – *DH – *C – *W – or the second element in a diphthong *Y – or the second element in a diphthong *A – or *E – or *I – or *O – or *U – or

Notes

References

*{{cite book , last = H.I. Galaal , first = Musa , title = Hikmaad Soomaali , publisher = Oxford University Press , year = 1956 , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=IWNRcgAACAAJ

External links

Osmanya, Borama, Wadaad's writing and the Somali language
Latin alphabets Writing systems of Africa Somali language Somali orthography

Form

See also

Notes

References

External links