Adlam Nasalization Mark

It links Adlam n to the next consonant as one prenasalized sound.

In a common lowercase spelling, it sits between 𞤲, the Adlam letter Nun for an n sound, and the next consonant. A prenasalized consonant begins with a brief nasal n-like sound that runs into that consonant; in 𞤲𞥋𞤣, the n and d form one unit.

Brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry devised the Adlam alphabet in Guinea in 1989 to write Fulani (also called Fula), whose sounds were not represented consistently by the Arabic-based and Latin-based spellings then used for it. They used the script in handwritten teaching books, practical guides, classes, and a newspaper. Nyondal appears in Adlam encoding proposals from 2013 and 2014. A 2024 Unicode proposal describes it as a digraph indicator between Nun and the next consonant. Its Unicode encoding records the sign for computers; it does not mark the sign's origin.

Why can’t I use an apostrophe?

Use the dedicated Adlam mark; apostrophes are punctuation.

The straight ASCII apostrophe ' and curly quote ’ are punctuation. An app may turn the straight one into a curly quote, give it the wrong right-to-left behavior, or stop neighboring Adlam letters from joining. Nyondal is an Adlam character that sits between letters while remaining transparent to their joining.

If 𞤲𞥋𞤣 shows a gap around the mark, check the font or shaping support. A 2020 issue report for Noto Sans Adlam recorded this display problem; replacing 𞥋 with punctuation changes the spelling.