Africa Alphabet

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Africa Alphabet
Type	alphabet
Spoken languages	African languages
Time period	1928 -
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) was developed in 1928 under the lead of Diedrich Westermann. He developed it with a group of Africanists at the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (later the IAI) in London. Its aim was to enable people to write all the African languages for practical and scientific purposes without diacritics.

This alphabet has influenced development of orthographies of many African languages (serving "as the basis for the transcription" of about 60, by one count^[1]), but not all, and discussions of harmonization of systems of transcription that led to, among other things, adoption of the African reference alphabet.

[edit] Characters

lowercase

a

b

ɓ

c

d

ɖ

e

ɛ

ǝ

f

ƒ

g

ɣ

h

x

i

j

k

uppercase

A

B

Б[2]

C

D

Ɖ

E

Ɛ

Ǝ

F

Ƒ

G

Ɣ

H

X

I

J

K

lowercase

l

m

n

ŋ

o

ɔ

p

r

s

ʃ

t

u

v

ʋ

w

y

z

ʒ

uppercase

L

M

N

Ŋ

O

Ɔ

P

R

S

Ʃ

T

U

V

Ʋ

W

Y

Z

Ʒ

Hola

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Coulmas, Florian, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, 1996, Blackwell, Oxford
• IIACL, Practical Orthography of African Languages, Revised Edition, London: Oxford University Press, 1930
• Sow, Alfa I., and Mohamed H. Abdulaziz, "Language and Social Change," Ch. 18 in Ali A. Mazrui (ed.) Africa Since 1935 (UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. 8). University of California Press, 1993.