Bamum Letter Lu

In Bamum, ꛍ represents the spoken syllable “lu.” Modern Bamum is a syllabary, a writing system in which signs represent syllables; this sign is read as part of a word.

King Njoya and palace scribes in the Bamum kingdom of Cameroon developed the writing system to record the Bamum language, history, customs, and administrative matters, and for teaching. One of the earliest surviving Bamum manuscripts is dated 1897.

How did Bamum writing change?

Bamum writing changed through several stages, from idea signs to syllables. Early signs represented objects or actions and served as memory aids. Later revisions used the rebus principle: a sign for one word could be reused for another word with a similar sound. This helped shift the script toward a syllabary, including the later A-ka-u-ku stage.

The earlier forms are known as Phases A through F. Modern Bamum also uses combining marks with base characters to extend possible syllables. Unicode describes possible influence from the Vai script on Bamum’s development; that is a proposed link between writing systems, not evidence that this individual sign came from Vai.