Adlam script
The Adlam script (ADLaM) is a right-to-left writing system invented in 1989 by brothers Ibrahima Barry, aged 14, and Abdoulaye Barry, aged 10, in Nzérékoré, Guinea, specifically for the Fulani language (Fulfulde or Pular), which is spoken by approximately 40 million people across West and Central Africa.[1][2] It comprises 28 letters and 10 numerals, with later expansions to 34 letters, designed to precisely capture the phonemes of Fulfulde, including sounds not well-represented by the Arabic or Latin scripts traditionally used for the language.[1][3] The name ADLaM derives from the first four letters of the alphabet (A, D, L, M) and serves as an acronym for Alkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol, meaning "the alphabet that protects the peoples from vanishing," reflecting its cultural preservation goals.[2][1] The script emerged from the brothers' frustration with the limitations of existing writing systems for Fulfulde, a language lacking a standardized orthography despite its widespread oral use among the Fulani people, who span 20 African countries and face linguistic marginalization due to colonial legacies favoring French and Arabic.[3][1] Ibrahima began sketching symbols inspired by Arabic curves but adapted for Fulfulde's unique sounds, such as implosive consonants and five distinct vowels, while Abdoulaye contributed refinements; the duo tested and iterated the design with local Fulani speakers over several years.[3][4] By the mid-1990s, Adlam had spread organically through grassroots teaching in Guinea, evolving into formal learning centers and classrooms across at least 10 West and Central African nations, including Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Gambia, where it supports literacy in education, health manuals, newspapers, and business without reliance on French.[2][3] Adlam's adoption accelerated digitally after its encoding in Unicode 9.0 in June 2016, facilitated by experts like Michael Everson, enabling its integration into major platforms such as Microsoft Windows (via the May 2019 update), Google Chrome, Android, and fonts like Noto Sans Adlam.[1][2] The first Adlam keyboard and font were developed in 2008, and by 2020, apps and resources had proliferated, fostering use in over 24 countries, including diaspora communities in Europe, Asia, and North America. As of 2024, further advancements include the release of the ADLaM Display font to enhance readability on social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, and updated W3C resources for web and eBook support, alongside Unicode chart refinements.[3][1][5][6][7] Despite challenges like initial technological barriers, political resistance—Ibrahima was imprisoned in 2002 amid suspicions over the script—and competition from colonial languages, Adlam has boosted cultural pride and literacy rates among non-French-literate Fulani, positioning it as a vital tool for linguistic revitalization.[1][2]Overview
Description
The Adlam script is an alphabetic writing system developed specifically for the Fulani language, known as Fulfulde, including dialects such as Pulaar spoken across West Africa.[8] It was created by brothers Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry to address limitations in existing scripts like Arabic and Latin for representing Fulfulde phonology.[3] Structurally, Adlam features 28 basic letters comprising 23 consonants and 5 vowels, with later expansions to include additional characters for a total of 34 letters as of recent updates; the script is written from right to left in a cursive style where letters may join optionally, similar to Arabic but with full-letter vowels rather than diacritics.[9][10][7] The letters include uppercase and lowercase forms, and diacritics are used to mark vowel length, gemination, and certain foreign sounds.[10] Recent digital enhancements, such as the ADLaM Display font released in 2024, have improved readability and support across platforms.[5] The name "Adlam" derives from the first four letters of the alphabet—A, D, L, and M—and serves as an acronym for Alkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol, translating to "the alphabet that protects the peoples from vanishing" in Fulfulde.[11][10] Adlam's design prioritizes ease of learning for non-literate Fulani speakers through its straightforward letter forms and phonetic mapping, ensuring accurate representation of the language's unique sounds like implosive consonants, while promoting cultural preservation by fostering literacy and ethnic identity among Fulani communities.[3]Linguistic role
The Adlam script serves as the primary writing system for Fulfulde, the language spoken by the Fulani people across West Africa, encompassing a range of dialects including Pulaar in western regions like Guinea and Senegal, Fulfulde in central areas, and Maasina Fulfulde in Mali and surrounding countries.[12][13] This alphabetic script, with its 28 basic letters and additional diacritics, is designed to capture the phonetic inventory of Fulfulde, which belongs to the North Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family and features distinctive sounds such as prenasalized consonants (e.g., ᵐb, ⁿd) and a five-vowel system without tonal distinctions, as Fulfulde is a non-tonal language.[14][15] The script's structure allows for precise representation of these elements, using a nasalization mark for nasals and lengtheners for extended vowels, facilitating accurate transcription of the language's articulatory phonetics in everyday and literary use.[12] In contrast to Latin-based orthographies, which were adapted from French and English colonial influences and often fail to consistently denote Fulfulde's unique phonemes—such as implosive consonants produced with ingressive airflow (e.g., "b" or "d" sounds while gulping air)—Adlam provides a dedicated, phonetically faithful system that resolves these inconsistencies.[3][16] This precision enables better phonetic mapping, reducing ambiguity in spelling and pronunciation, and has been credited with boosting literacy rates among Fulani communities by making the script more intuitive and culturally resonant for native speakers.[17][2] Unlike the Latin script's linear, left-to-right orientation and limited diacritic use, Adlam's right-to-left cursive flow and bicameral forms (uppercase and lowercase) align more closely with regional writing traditions while offering a clean transliteration pathway back to Latin for interoperability.[12] Adlam's linguistic adaptability extends beyond Fulfulde, showing potential for use in multilingual West African contexts with related Niger-Congo languages in the Atlantic subgroup.[15] Its inclusion of characters for Arabic loanwords and additional consonants for foreign phonemes supports this versatility, allowing it to accommodate code-switching and borrowing common in polyglot societies without major modifications.[12] Creators Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry envisioned Adlam for broader African language applications, promoting it as a tool to preserve and revitalize indigenous orthographic practices in diverse linguistic environments.[18]History
Invention
The Adlam script was invented in 1989 in Nzérékoré, Guinea, by two brothers, Ibrahima Barry, aged 14, and Abdoulaye Barry, aged 10.[11][19] Motivated by the absence of an adequate writing system for their native Fulfulde language, which is spoken by millions of Fulani people across West Africa but was inadequately represented by Arabic or Latin scripts, the brothers sought to create a precise alphabetic system tailored to Fulani phonology.[3][20] Their inspiration stemmed from childhood frustrations, including difficulties in reading family letters written in Arabic script and a pivotal question to their father about why the Fulani lacked their own writing system.[11][3] The initial design process involved hand-drawing letters in composition books after school, with the brothers closing their eyes to visualize and create unique shapes for each of the 28 core sounds in Fulfulde, resulting in a right-to-left script that could be written cursively like Arabic but featured full letters for vowels rather than diacritics.[3][19] Over six months, they refined the forms to ensure they accurately captured Fulani phonemes, including those not present in Arabic, and tested the script by transcribing short stories from their mother and sharing them with family members for readability checks.[3][21] The brothers' sister, Aissata Barry, played a key role in early validation, confirming the script's legibility through blind reading tests similar to those used for the Cherokee syllabary.[11] By the early 1990s, the script began spreading through handwritten materials, as the brothers taught it to friends, family, and local communities in Nzérékoré, with each learner instructed to pass it on to three others, facilitating organic dissemination via markets and nomadic Fulani traders.[19][3] This grassroots effort extended Adlam to neighboring countries like Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Gambia by the mid-1990s, where it appeared in transcribed schoolbooks and personal correspondence.[3] In 1993, Abdoulaye Barry demonstrated the script on radio in Conakry, Guinea's capital, marking an early public acknowledgment and accelerating its visibility nationwide.[3] The script received its first formal recognition in the 2000s through promotion by cultural associations dedicated to Fulani heritage, which organized teaching sessions and materials distribution to build community literacy.[5]Evolution and standardization
Following its initial creation in the late 1980s, the Adlam script underwent refinements in the 2000s as the Barry brothers, Abdoulaye and Ibrahima, promoted its use among Fulani communities in Guinea and neighboring countries. During this period of promotion, Ibrahima Barry faced political opposition, including a three-month imprisonment in 2002 after military officers raided a cultural association meeting.[3] These updates focused on improving letterform legibility and ease of handwriting, incorporating feedback from early learners who noted ambiguities in certain shapes during informal teaching sessions and handwritten materials. For instance, adjustments were made to simplify curves and connections in letters like those representing dental sounds, making them more distinct when written quickly by hand.[3] A pivotal step in formalization came with the Unicode proposal submitted in 2013 by the Barry brothers in collaboration with the Script Encoding Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. The initial document outlined 85 characters, including letters for the 28 core sounds (consonants and vowels) and diacritics, emphasizing the script's right-to-left directionality and cursive nature. Revised in 2014 to address technical encoding details and community input on glyph variants, the proposal led to Adlam's inclusion in Unicode 9.0, released in June 2016, which assigned it the block U+1E900–U+1E95F. This encoding enabled digital representation and laid the groundwork for broader standardization.[22][23][24] In 2019, the first major glyph updates were proposed to enhance typographic consistency, particularly in addressing cursive connections that had caused rendering issues in early fonts. Changes included eliminating ascenders in medial and final lowercase forms to prevent diacritic overlaps, standardizing connection strokes for letters like jiim and sinniyiyhe, and refining counters in characters such as pe for better distinction in connected text. These revisions, driven by the Barry brothers and reviewed by the Unicode Technical Committee, were recommended for updating the reference font to Ebrima or Kigelia, improving overall readability in printed and digital media.[25][26] Further evolutions have continued into 2025, building on the changes tracked in Unicode Technical Note #58 (up to 2024), which documents ongoing character shape adjustments for optimal digital rendering and font legibility. Key developments involved distinguishing lengthening diacritics, such as separating the alif lengthener (U+1E944) from the vowel lengthener (U+1E945) with clearer visual forms, and refining long vowel representations to differentiate uppercase and lowercase contexts (e.g., 𞤭𞥅 for /iː/). These updates addressed feedback on diacritic positioning in variable fonts, ensuring consistent appearance across devices while maintaining the script's cursive flow.[27][12]Script components
Consonants
The Adlam script employs 23 basic consonant letters to represent the core phonemes of Fula (Fulani) and related West Atlantic languages, forming part of its 28-letter alphabetic inventory alongside five vowels. These consonants were designed by brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry in 1989 to capture the linguistic features of Fulani speech, including implosives, velars, and glides essential to the language's phonology.[28][12] The consonant shapes follow featural design principles inspired by articulatory phonetics, where glyph forms visually encode place and manner of articulation for intuitive learning. For instance, labial consonants such as /b/ and /f/ feature curved or rounded strokes to evoke lip rounding, while coronal consonants like /t/ and /d/ incorporate straight vertical lines suggesting tongue position along the alveolar ridge. Velar and uvular sounds, such as /k/ and /q/, use angular or hooked forms to represent back-articulation. This systematic approach aids native speakers in memorizing and handwriting the script.[28][12] The following table lists the 23 basic consonants, including their Adlam glyphs (in lowercase form), conventional Latin transliterations used in Fula orthographies, and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) equivalents. These mappings reflect standard Fula pronunciation, with variations possible across dialects.| Adlam Glyph | Transliteration | IPA |
|---|---|---|
| 𞤣 | d | /d/ |
| 𞤤 | l | /l/ |
| 𞤥 | m | /m/ |
| 𞤦 | b | /b/ |
| 𞤧 | s | /s/ |
| 𞤨 | p | /p/ |
| 𞤩 | ɓ | /ɓ/ |
| 𞤪 | r | /r/ |
| 𞤬 | f | /f/ |
| 𞤯 | ɗ | /ɗ/ |
| 𞤰 | ƴ | /ƴ/ |
| 𞤱 | w | /w/ |
| 𞤲 | n | /n/ |
| 𞤳 | k | /k/ |
| 𞤴 | y | /j/ |
| 𞤶 | j | /dʒ/ |
| 𞤷 | ch | /tʃ/ |
| 𞤸 | h | /h/ |
| 𞤹 | q | /q/ |
| 𞤺 | g | /ɡ/ |
| 𞤻 | ñ | /ɲ/ |
| 𞤼 | t | /t/ |
| 𞤽 | ŋ | /ŋ/ |