Adamawa Fulfulde

Joining forms

Because the Arabic script is 'cursive' (ie. joined-up) writing, letters tend to have different shapes depending on whether they join with adjacent letters or not (see cursive). In addition, vowels can be represented using different characters, depending on where in a word they appear.

In scripts such as Arabic, several characters have no left-joining form. In what follows we'll use the characters ي and د to illustrate shapes. The former can join on both sides, but the latter can only join on the right.

Left-joining glyphs are commonly called initial; dual-joining are called medial; and right-joining are called final. Glyphs that don't join on either side are called isolated. However, these glyph shapes can be found in various places within a single word.

Word-initial characters usually have initial glyph shapes (eg. 064A ). However, characters that only join to the right will use an isolated glyph shape (eg. 062F ). Furthermore, words beginning with a vowel are always preceded by a vowel carrier, which is normally ا (eg. 0627 06CC or 0627 064E ).

Word-medial characters will typically join on both sides (eg. 064A ) but those that only join to the right will use a final glyph (eg. 062F ). However, if either of those is preceded by another character that only joins to the right, the glyph shapes rendered will be initial (eg. 064A ) and isolated (eg. 062F ), respectively.

Word-final characters will typically use a final glyph shape (eg. 064A and 062F ). However, if the previous character joins only to the right, they will use isolated glyph shapes (eg.064A and 062F ).

In all this contextual glyph shaping the basic shapes used for a character can vary significantly in a script like Arabic. This also includes some characters that only have ijam dots in certain contexts.

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	alveolar	post-alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p b	t d	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ		k ɡ	ʔ ʔʲ
pre-nasalised	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮd͡ʒ		ᵑɡ
implosive	ɓ	ɗ
fricative	f	s z				h
nasal	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
approximant	w	l		j
trill/flap		r ɾ

Fula is reported to be one of only 3 languages that contrast prenasalized consonants and their corresponding clusters (eg. ᵐb versus mb).@Wikipedia: Prenasalized consonant,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenasalized_consonant

Observation: A few sources mention a letter that represents the sound ɠ, found in Guinea, and written in the Latin orthography with the same symbol (though previously written using q). No examples of this sound have been encountered in my research.

Tone

Languages in the Atlantic group of the Niger-Congo family, of which Fula is one, are unusual in that they are not tonal.

Structure

Fula has 2 regular syllable types: CV and CVC, where V can be a short or long vowel, and an initial C may be a glottal stop. Only a small number of sounds can occur as a coda, and closed syllables are much less common than open ones.

The distinction between long and short vowels is phonemically distinctive.

Consonant clusters only occur where a syllable follows a closed syllable. Gemination is, however, a distinctive feature.

A syllable can only contain a single vowel.lhs

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assignments.

Each table cell shows word-initial, word-medial, and word-final forms from right to left. The glyphs shown are illustrative; alternative shapes may occur (see joining_forms). Click/tap on items to see a list of the components for that cell.

In word-initial position vowels are attached to a consonant letter which acts as a vowel carrier (see standalone). Otherwise, unlike orthographies for languages such as Arabic and Urdu, the characters used to represent a vowel are normally the same, regardless of the position within a word. The one exception is the word-final eː, which breaks the regular pattern by dropping the superscript alef.

Note that eː is written using ى, rather than ي.

Post-consonant vowels

Vowels that follow consonants are written using a mixture of combining marks and letters. Vowel diacritics are not hidden.

The way a given vowel is written depends on its joining behaviour (initial, medial, or final). In some cases a vowel is written using just a diacritic, in others it is via combinations of letters and diacritics. Most of the letters also double as consonants. 8 combining marks are used to write vowels, and 6 letters, only 1 of which is a dedicated vowel letter.

Standalone vowels

Standalone vowels in Fulfulde normally use ع followed by the relevant vowel characters.

عَسَرْ

مٛعّٜرٜ

Occasionally, loan words or names from the Qur'an will use ا, أ, or إ as the vowel carrier, which are conventional ways of writing the standalone vowels in Arabic. ء may also be used.

إِبْرَاهِيمَ

الْمَسِيحُ

ءَادَمُ

Vowel sounds to characters

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

The consonants in the right column include letters used for Arabic loan words and names from the Qur'an, but not usually used for native Fulfulde text. In some cases, Fulfulde text may substitute basic Fulfulde letters for these.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Basic set

These consonants are a basic set used for the native Fulfulde orthography.

Some sounds are represented by combinations of characters. The trilled r is written رّ.

تٛرَّاغٛ

The sound ŋ is written as the combination نغ. That combination is also used to indicate the prenasalised sound ᵑɡ. See prenasalised for other prenasalised combinations.

نغَرٛلْ

نغَيْنَاکَ

Other consonants

Arabic loan words and names from the Qur'an may be written with addtional letters shown below, but they are not usually used for native Fulfulde text. In some cases, Fulfulde text may substitute basic Fulfulde letters for these.

Onsets

Word-initial consonant clusters are not common in Fulfulde, with the exception of those involving prenasalisation.

Finals

Syllable- and word-final consonants are written as a normal consonant with 0652 above.

عَلْکَوَلْ

The syllable-final sukun also distinguishes nasal phonemes from prenasalised sounds (see prenasalised), and diphthongs from long vowels (see diphthong).

دِمْبَاغٛ

جَوْدِ

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters are written by adding 0652, over the consonant letters that are not followed by a vowel.

جَرْنٜ

دٜڢْتٜرٜ

Consonant length

Geminated consonants are indicated using 0651.

دٛکَّلْ

جٜمَّ

Consonant sounds to characters

Hamza & precomposed characters

Unicode support for the various uses of the hamza is complicated.u,384 In general, the Unicode Standard recommends to use 0654 in combination with a base character. However, there are a few exceptions to consider.

Codepoint sequences

When typing and in storage, combining marks always follow the base character they are associated with.

Managing text direction

Unicode provides a set of 10 formatting characters that can be used to control the direction of text when displayed. These characters have no visual form in the rendered text, however text editing applications may have a way to show their location.

202B (RLE), 202A (LRE), and 202C (PDF) are in widespread use to set the base direction of a range of characters. RLE/LRE comes at the start, and PDF at the end of a range of characters for which the base direction is to be set.

In Unicode 6.1, the Unicode Standard added a set of characters which do the same thing but also isolate the content from surrounding characters, in order to avoid spillover effects. They are 2067 (RLI), 2066 (LRI), and 2066 (PDI). The Unicode Standard recommends that these be used instead.

There is also 2068 (FSI), used initially to set the base direction according to the first recognised strongly-directional character.

061C (ALM) is used to produce correct sequencing of numeric data. Follow the link and see expressions for details.

200F (RLM) and 200E (LRM) are invisible characters with strong directional properties that are also sometimes used to produce the correct ordering of text.

For more information about how to use these formatting characters see How to use Unicode controls for bidi text. Note, however, that when writing HTML you should generally use markup rather than these control codes. For information about that, see Creating HTML Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and Other Right-to-left Scripts.

Cursive script

See type samples.

Arabic script is always cursive, ie. letters in a word are joined up. Fonts need to produce the appropriate joining form for a letter, according to its visual context, but the code point used doesn't change. This results in four different shapes for most letters (including an isolated shape). Ligated forms also join with characters alongside them.

The highlights in the example below show the same letter, ع, with three different joining forms.

Most Arabic script letters join on both sides. A few only join on the right-hand side: this involves 4 basic shapes for Fulfulde Ajamiya.

ء doesn't join on either side.

Context-based shaping & positioning

In addition to the cursive shaping, Arabic script glyphs also require context-dependent shaping and positioning. For more information, see the Arabic language orthography notes.

The usual mandatory ligature applies for لا.

لَامُ

سِلَاوٛ

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

A number of small words, such as pronouns, may be attached to a following word in the ajamiya orthography (whereas they are separate in the Latin orthography).

مِࢩَوِ

عٛوَنغْغَ

Graphemes

tbd

Phrase & section boundaries

Fulfulde uses a mixture of ASCII and Arabic punctuation.

Mirrored characters

The words 'left' and 'right' in the Unicode names for parentheses, brackets, and other paired characters should be ignored. LEFT should be read as if it said START, and RIGHT as END. The direction in which the glyphs point will be automatically determined according to the base direction of the text.

The number of characters that are mirrored in this way is around 550, most of which are mathematical symbols. Some are single characters, rather than pairs. The following are some of the more common ones.

(␣)␣<␣>␣[␣]␣{␣}␣«␣»␣‹␣›

Quotations & citations

The following quotation marks can be found in Fulfulde texts. (Depending on ease of input, quotations may alternatively be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.)

Because they are mirrored, when using these quotation marks, LEFT should be read as if it said START, and RIGHT as END.

Line breaking & hyphenation

Lines are normally broken at word boundaries.

They are not broken at the small gaps that appear where a character doesn't join on the left.

Baselines, line height, etc.

tbd

Fulfulde ajami uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

Fulfulde characters have ascenders and descenders, and combining marks appear above and below the lettters. These stretch beyond the ascenders and descenders of Latin text.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Fulfulde glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic height of Fulfulde letters is typically around the Latin x-height, however extenders and combining marks reach well beyond the Latin ascenders and descenders, creating a need for larger line spacing.

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Scheherazade font.

General page layout & progression

Arabic script books, magazines, etc., are bound on the right-hand side, and pages progress from right to left.

Columns are vertical but run right-to-left across the page.

Grids & tables

Tables, grids, and other 2-dimensional arrangements progress from right to left across a page.

Forms & user interaction

Form controls should display Arabic text from right to left, starting at the right side of the input field. Form controls should also usually be arranged from right to left.

fig_form shows some form fields from an Arabic language web page. Note the position of the labels relative to the input fields and the checkbox, mirror-imaging a similar page in English. Note also that the input text in the first field appears to the right of the box.

The position of a scrollbar should depend on the user's environment, not on the content of a page. A non-Arab user viewing a web page in Arabic shouldn't have to look for the scroll bar on the left side of the window. In a system that is set up for an Arab user, however, the scrollbar can appear on the left.