Bulu Alphabet

Bulu is written in the Latin script in two orthographies: the older Presbyterian spelling and the PROPELCA spelling based on the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages. The Bulu-specific PROPELCA inventory includes C and J as well as Ə, Ɔ and Ŋ, and uses digraphs such as kp, mb, nd and ny. It does not match the Ewondo character set; the PROPELCA inventory has no Ɛ, G, H, P or R.

The Bulu PROPELCA spelling uses three special single letters: Ə ə for /ə/ (schwa), Ɔ ɔ for /ɔ/, and Ŋ ŋ for /ŋ/. The open-e Ɛ ɛ is not part of this Bulu alphabet. The older Presbyterian spelling uses a different inventory and writes the corresponding sounds with e, ô and ñ.

Other sounds are written with two letters rather than special characters, as in the rest of the General Alphabet: ny for the ny of canyon, and nasal clusters such as mb, nd and ŋg. Many place and family names keep French-style spellings; the town of Sangmélima, for example, appears on maps with a French é rather than in the standard alphabet.

Bulu tone marks: what á, à, â and ǎ mean

Bulu is a tonal Bantu language: the pitch of a syllable is part of the word, so two words with the same letters can mean different things. The full spelling marks it with accents: the acute for a high tone (á), the grave for a low tone (à), the circumflex for a falling tone (â, high to low) and the caron for a rising tone (ǎ, low to high). The marks go on the vowels and can also sit on a nasal n or m that forms a syllable of its own, as in ń and ǹ. Everyday Bulu spelling generally leaves tone unmarked; specialist works may mark it for linguistic analysis.

Unicode has precomposed accented vowels and nasals, but in Bulu's older Presbyterian spelling, é and ô distinguish vowel quality rather than tone. For linguistic transcriptions using PROPELCA letters such as ɔ and ə, type the base letter and then a combining mark: ɔ followed by the combining caron ̌ gives ɔ̌, and ə followed by the combining circumflex ̂ gives ə̂. These are Unicode sequences, not precomposed Bulu letters; the tone convention depends on the transcription you are following.

A ready-made é and an e followed by a combining acute look identical and count as the same text in Unicode, but some search boxes and spell checkers treat them differently. If a word you pasted is not found, retype the accented vowel with one method throughout.

How to type Bulu's special letters on a keyboard, iPhone or Android

The quickest way is to copy the Bulu-specific letters from this page. In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the code and press Alt+X: 0254 for ɔ, 0186 for Ɔ, 0259 for ə, 018F for Ə, 014B for ŋ and 014A for Ŋ. The combining tone marks work the same way after the letter: 0301 high, 0300 low, 0302 falling, 030C rising. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input source in Keyboard settings, hold Option and type the same codes.

For linguistic tone transcription, the US-International layout on Windows types á with ' then a, à with ` then a, and â with ^ then a; Alt codes work too (Alt+0225 á, Alt+0224 à, Alt+0226 â, Alt+0233 é, Alt+0244 ô). In everyday Presbyterian Bulu, é and ô mark vowel quality, not tone, and tone is generally left unmarked. On a Mac, Option+E then the vowel gives the acute, Option+` the grave and Option+I the circumflex; the ABC Extended layout adds Option+V for the caron (ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ). On a phone, long-press a vowel for á à â.

For regular writing in Bulu, choose an orthography and install a keyboard made for Cameroonian languages: SIL's free Keyman keyboards for Cameroon come in AZERTY and QWERTY layouts for Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone, support Bulu, and include characters used in Cameroonian languages. Without one, set up text replacements once (iPhone: Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement; Android: your keyboard's personal dictionary) with short triggers such as oo, ee and ng. In HTML, write ɔ for ɔ, ə for ə and ŋ (or ŋ) for ŋ.

Watch the look-alikes. The small schwa ə (U+0259) looks exactly like the turned e ǝ (U+01DD), but their capitals differ, Ə and Ǝ; Cameroonian usage, CLDR's Ewondo data included, pairs ə with Ə. The letter ŋ is a Latin letter, not Greek η. Similar-looking characters can break search, sorting and spell checks.

Where the Bulu language is spoken in Cameroon

Bulu is the language of the Bulu people of Cameroon's South Region, in the rainforest around Ebolowa, the regional capital, and Sangmélima, and in communities in Yaoundé and Douala. CLDR estimates about 1.4 million speakers. It belongs to the Beti-Fang group of Bantu languages (A74 in Guthrie's classification), together with Ewondo, Eton and Fang, spoken in southern Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo; these related languages have partial mutual intelligibility.

Bulu became a written language through American Presbyterian missionaries, who set up stations in the south from the 1890s, among them Elat near Ebolowa, taught in Bulu and translated the Bible into it. That made Bulu a language of church and school across much of southern Cameroon, and Bulu hymns and scripture have long been read in its Presbyterian congregations.

Many Bulu speakers also use French, one of Cameroon's two official languages, so French guillemets « » are familiar alongside curly quotes “ ”, and prices are written the Cameroonian way, 5 000 FCFA, since the CFA franc has no Unicode sign. The Cameroon collection has the country's flag 🇨🇲 and emoji; the Ewondo, Fang, Basaa and French collections cover the neighbouring languages.