Fon Alphabet (Fongbe)

Fon is written in the Latin script, in the national alphabet Benin uses for its own languages. The Fon language alphabet runs A B C D Ɖ E Ɛ F G GB H I J K KP L M N NY O Ɔ P R S T U V W X Y Z: every English letter except Q, plus three that come from the phonetic alphabet. In alphabetical order and in dictionaries each new letter follows its plain neighbour, ɖ after d, ɛ after e and ɔ after o, so ɖ words come after all the d words.

Some letters do not sound as an English reader expects. c is the ch of church and j the j of jam; x is a rough sound made at the back of the mouth, as in xó, word, and xwé, house. Three sounds are written with two letters and count as one: gb and kp, where g and b (or k and p) are pronounced at the same time, as in gbè, language, and ny, the ñ of Spanish. Nasal vowels are written with an n after the vowel, which is why the people are the Fɔn and their language Fɔngbè, the Fon language.

Ɖ ɖ, Ɛ ɛ and Ɔ ɔ: the special Fon letters

Ɖ ɖ, the African D, is a d made with the tongue curled further back than in English; Fon keeps it apart from plain d, and it begins very common words such as ɖokpo, one. Ɛ ɛ is an open e, close to the vowel of English bed, and Ɔ ɔ an open o, close to the vowel of British law; plain e and o are higher, as in French é and eau. Writing e for ɛ or o for ɔ changes the word, so they are letters of their own, not decorations.

The same three letters are used in Ewe, Gun and other Gbe languages, and ɛ and ɔ across much of West Africa. Watch the look-alikes when you copy: Ɖ looks exactly like the Croatian and Vietnamese Đ, but its small letter is ɖ, with a tail, not đ; ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, and ɔ is not the reversed c ↄ. A search for a word spelled with the wrong look-alike will not find it.

Fon tone marks: á à ǎ

Fon is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable is part of the word. Careful writing, in dictionaries and teaching material, marks it on the vowel, an acute accent for a high tone (á é í ó ú), a grave accent for a low tone (à è ì ò ù) and a caron for a rising tone (ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ), as in nǔ, thing, and vǐ, child. In everyday messages, signs and names people usually leave the tones out and write the letters alone.

All the toned a e i o u exist as single characters. ɛ and ɔ do not: for a toned ɛ or ɔ you type the letter and then a combining mark, which settles onto the letter in front of it. ɔ followed by U+0301 gives ɔ́, ɛ followed by U+0300 gives ɛ̀. The three combining marks are in the grid, so you can copy them the same way as the letters.

How to type Fon letters on a phone or PC

In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the code and press Alt+X: 0256 gives ɖ and 0189 Ɖ, 025B ɛ and 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ and 0186 Ɔ; 01CE gives ǎ, and after a vowel 0301, 0300 or 030C adds a high, low or rising tone. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and hold Option while typing the same codes; with the ordinary US layout, Option+E then a vowel gives á é í ó ú and Option+` then a vowel gives à è ì ò ù. For daily typing, free keyboard layouts for West African languages, for example through Keyman, put ɖ ɛ ɔ on their own keys.

In HTML, write ɖ for ɖ, Ɖ for Ɖ, ɛ for ɛ, Ɛ for Ɛ, ɔ for ɔ and Ɔ for Ɔ. On a phone, see whether your keyboard app offers Fon or a West African layout; if not, tap the letters in the grid to copy them. Keyboards sold in Benin are French AZERTY, which have é è à ù on their own keys, but not the Fon letters.

Where Fon is spoken

Fon is the largest language of Benin 🇧🇯: Unicode's CLDR estimates about 3.7 million speakers, mostly in the south, on the Abomey plateau and around Bohicon and Cotonou, and it is widely used as a second language across the south. French is the official language; Fon, Yoruba, Bariba and the other national languages are written in the same national alphabet.

Fon was the language of the Kingdom of Dahomey, ruled from Abomey until the French conquest in the 1890s, and of Vodun, whose very name is a Fon word. It belongs to the Gbe languages of the Kwa family, with Gun, Aja and Ewe, so a Fon speaker and an Ewe speaker share many words. See the Ewe, Yoruba and French collections for the neighbouring alphabets, and Benin for the country's flag, currency and emoji.