This page brings together basic information about the Latin script and its use for the Fula languages and dialects. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Fula using Unicode.
Fula is term for a family that includes numerous dialects and languages, however they are largely mutually comprehensible, and the orthography only varies slightly. The examples in this document may be drawn from any of the Fula local languages.
Select part of this sample text to show a list of characters, with links to more details.
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Innama aadeeji fof poti, ndimɗidi e jibinannde to bannge hakkeeji. Eɓe ngoodi miijo e hakkilantaagal ete eɓe poti huufo ndirde e nder ɓ iynguyummaagu.
Gooto kala ina waawi hokkunde hoore mum hakkeeji e ndima guuji kaalaaɗi e nanondiralngal tawa alaa paltagol nguru, mbaydi, leñol, ɗemngal, diine, iwdi leydi walla renndo, dañal, jibinande walla kala ngonka. E ko fawtii heen hay paltoor gooto woodataa e dow yowitaade e dawrugol, ñaawoore hakkunde leyɗeele fawaade e neɗɗo ummiiɗo leydi walla neɗɗo mo yowitaaki maa woni pawiɗo yamiroore laawɗinaande waawnde wonde fof.
Fula is normally written in the Latin script, but also the Adlam script is growing in use, and historically but still occasionally it is written using the Arabic ajami script. The Fula languages and dialects are spread across some 20 countries in the Sahel and Central Africa, extending from the coast of West Africa to Sudan, and encompassing around 40 million speakers.
Fula is referred to using several names, including Fulani, Fulah, and in the east, Fulfulde. Individual Fulah languages also have their own names, such as Pular, Pulaar, Maasina Fulfulde, Adamawa Fulfulde, etc.
FulaˈfuːləFula language
Use of the Latin script began with the colonisation of Africa. Prior to the 1966 Bamako expert meeting organised by UNESCO, there was wide variation in the letters used to represent sounds in the various regions, and greater use of digraphs rather than phonetic symbols. The 1966 meeting established a basic set of spelling conventions, but some regions didn't adopt all the changes straight away. For example, the move from ny to ɲ or ñ commonly occurred later. There was another conference in Niamey in 1978. Nevertheless, orthographies for the language and its variants are determined at the country level, so while Fula writing uses basically the same character sets and rules across the region, there are some minor variations.wfl
The Latin script is an alphabet. This means that it is largely phonetic in nature, where each letter represents a basic sound. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern Fula orthography using the Latin script.
A small number of spelling differences occur in some of the regions where Fula is written, but generally spelling remains consistent.
Fula text runs left-to-right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. The orthography is bicameral. The visual forms of letters don't usually interact.
Fula has 23 consonant letters, three of which can be written in two different ways. Loan words use 4 more consonant letters (though they are rare). All this duplicated in upper- and lowercase.
Some sounds, in particular a set of 4 pre-nasalised consonants, are written using digraphs (which are counted as letters of the alphabet).
This orthography is an alphabet where vowels are written using 5 vowel letters (10 counting both uppercase and lowercase). The 5 vowel letters do not reflect differences in vowel quality associated with short vs. long vowels.
The Fula alphabet varies slightly from country to country. A small number of sounds are written differently from one region to the next, and there are small differences sometimes in the order of the items in the alphabet. Wikipedia has a list of Alphabets by country, Here we show a superset of alphabetic items and tease them apart below the table.
ᵐb is written mb in all regions except Guinea, which uses nb.
ɠ is only used in Guinea.
ɲ is written ɲ in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso, ñ in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia, and ny in Niger, Cameroon, Chad, CAR, and Nigeria.
ʔʲ is written ʼy in Nigeria, but ƴ everywhere else.
Items to show in lists
Phonology
The following represents the general repertoire of the Fula languages and dialects.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
Vowel sounds
Plain vowels
Whether the script is Adlam, Latin, or Arabic, the sources of information found for Fula don't provide a great deal of clarity around the precise phonetic pronunciation of the vowel sounds, and, unfortunately, there is no IPA-transcribed data in Wiktionary to help clarify actual pronunciation.
Most sources simply transcribe all vowel sounds as a i e o u, which are the phonemically distinct vowels. However, some sources make a distinction in their transcriptions between short vowels pronounced ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ a, and long vowels pronounced iː uː eː oː aː.
Furthermore, the phonetic sounds of a vowel may be influenced by the following consonant.lhs
Examples in this page are drawn from various sources, and may or may not use broad phonemic or narrow(er) transcriptions.
Diphthongs
Fula/Fulfulde diphthongs are all vowels followed by a -j or a -w glide. They include the following.mhm
iw
uj
eyew
ojow
ajaw
uj doesn't occur in word-final position.mhm,28
Consonant sounds
labial
alveolar
post-alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
stop
pb
td
t͡ʃd͡ʒ
kɡ
ʔʔʲ
pre-nasalised
ᵐb
ⁿd
ᶮd͡ʒ
ᵑɡ
implosive
ɓ
ɗ
fricative
f
sz
h
nasal
m
n
ɲ
ŋ
approximant
w
l
j
trill/flap
rɾ
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
Vowels
Vowel summary table
The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.
Vowels following consonants are written using 5 vowel letters (10 counting both uppercase and lowercase), that do not reflect differences in vowel quality associated with short vs. long vowels. Long vowels are indicated by doubling letters.
Plain vowels
5 vowel letters are used, each with an upper and lower case form.
i␣u␣e␣o␣aI␣U␣E␣O␣A
Vowel length
Long vowel sounds are written by doubling the relevant vowels, eg.
buguuru
Long and short vowel sounds are phonemically distinctive, although minimal pairs are relatively uncommonfsi,8, eg.
jangojaango
Standalone vowels
Standalone vowels are written using ordinary vowel letters and no special arrangements.
Vowel sounds to characters
This section maps Fula vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Latin orthography.
The right-hand column shows uppercase forms.
Lowercase
Uppercase
i ɪ
i
ɗiɗi
I
iː
ii
diidol
u ʊ
u
Fulfulde
U
uː
uu
buuruuje
e ɛ
e
feccere
E
eː
ee
keerol
o ɔ
o
kono
O
oː
oo
koohooɓe
a
a
abada
A
aː
aa
baaba
Consonants
Consonant summary table
The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.
The right column shows letters used in loan words and foreign pronunciations (especially Arabic), but not usually used for native Fula text.
ɲ is used in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso, ñ in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia, and ny in Niger, Cameroon, Chad, CAR, and Nigeria.
Pre-nasalised stops
mb␣nb␣nd␣nj␣ng
Pre-nasalised sounds are written using digraphs, and frequently occur word-initially. The digraphs are considered to be letters in the alphabet, eg.
mbeewangayuurinjoyo
nb is reportedly used in Guineawfa, whereas mb is used everywhere else.
Word-medially, the orthography doesn't clearly distinguish between syllable-final nasals and syllables beginning with a pre-nasal sound. For example, hindu could mean it (hi.ndu) or ancient (hin.du). (The Adlam script and Arabic script orthographies do allow this distinction to be clearly made.)
Observation: It seems that ᵑɡ can also be written ŋg, eg.
ɗemŋgalkoŋŋgol
Repertoire extension
The following are sometimes used for foriegn sounds in loan words or transcriptions, particularly from Arabic, and are rare.
q␣sh␣v␣x␣z
Alternative spellings
Prior to the 1966 Bamako expert meeting organised by UNESCO, there was wider variation in the letters used to represent sounds in the various regions, and greater use of digraphs rather than phonetic symbols. The 1966 meeting established a basic set of spelling conventions, but some regions didn't adopt all the changes straight away. For example, the move from ny to ɲ or ñ commonly occurred later.
The following table shows standard modern spelling variants and non-standard spellings which may date from prior to the UNESCO reforms, or may arise because people don't have access to non-ASCII characters on their keyboard, etc.
Standard modern spelling(s)
Non-standard spelling(s)
ɓ
bh
c
ty
ɗ
dh
j
dy | di
ŋ
nh
ɲ | ñ
ny
u
ou
w
ou
ƴ | ʼy
yh
Consonant length
Consonant gemination is common and is distinctive in Fula. Gemination is written by doubling the consonant, eg.
tutogoltuttogol
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Fula consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Latin orthography.
The right-hand column shows uppercase forms.
Lowercase
Uppercase
p
p
peewal
P
b
b
baaba
B
ɓ
ɓ
ɓalal
Ɓ
t
t
tati
T
t͡ʃ
c
coggu
C
d
d
diidol
D
d͡ʒ
j
jango
J
ɗ
ɗ
ɗaɗol
Ɗ
k
k
kosam
K
ɡ
g
goonga
G
q
q
qalamu
Q
ʔ
ʼ
goʼo
ʔʲ
ƴ
ƴiiƴam
ʼy in Nigeria.
Ƴ
ʼY
ᵐb
mb
mbeewa
Mb
ⁿd
nd
ndowru
Nd
ᶮd͡ʒ
nj
njoyo
Nj
ᵑɡ
ng
ngayuuri
Ng
f
f
fayande
F
v
v
V
s
s
saare
S
z
z
zawju
Z
ʃ
sh
shahaada
SH
ɣ
x
X
h
h
hanki
H
m
m
maaro
M
n
n
nantinoore
N
ɲ
ɲ in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
ɲaari
ñ in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia.
Fula is bicameral, and applications may need to enable transforms to allow the user to switch between cases.
Typographic units
Word boundaries
Words are separated by spaces.
Graphemes
tbd
Punctuation & inline features
Phrase & section boundaries
,␣;␣:␣.␣?␣!
Fula uses ASCII punctuation.
phrase
,
;
:
sentence
.
?
!
Bracketed text
(␣)
Fula commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.
start
end
standard
(
)
Quotations & citations
“␣”␣‘␣’
Fula texts may use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.
