Ghomala Alphabet

Ghomalaʼ (in its own spelling Ghɔmáláʼ) is written with the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages, the shared spelling system agreed in 1979 for the country's own languages. It keeps the plain Latin letters that the language needs and adds letters for its own sounds: ɛ, ɔ, ə, ʉ, ŋ and the glottal stop ʼ. Published Ghomala alphabet lists include R, the vowel grapheme Aə and digraphs such as Bv, Dz, Gh, Ny, Nt, Ŋk, Pf, Mpf, Sh, Ts and Zh; ʼ has the same form in uppercase and lowercase.

Some sounds are written with two letters that count as one, and they need no special characters: the gh at the start of the name Ghomala' is a soft, voiced sound made at the back of the mouth, close to a gargled g, and ny is the ny of canyon. Alphabet charts may count multi-letter graphemes as separate entries, so the total depends on what is counted.

What ɛ, ɔ, ə, ʉ, ŋ and ʼ stand for

The extra vowels come from the International Phonetic Alphabet, where each letter stands for one sound. Ɛ ɛ (open e) is close to the vowel of English bed, while plain e is higher, nearer French é. Ɔ ɔ (open o) is close to the vowel of British law, while plain o is the o of go. Ə ə (schwa) is the short, relaxed vowel at the start of English about. Ʉ ʉ (u with a bar) is a u said with the tongue pushed forward, between the vowels of French tout and tu. Ŋ ŋ (eng) is the ng of sing, and in Ghomala' it can begin a word as well as end one.

The apostrophe-like ʼ is a full letter, not punctuation: it writes the glottal stop, the catch in the throat heard in the middle of English uh-oh. It is why the language's own name ends in ʼ. The right character is the modifier letter apostrophe ʼ (U+02BC), which software treats as part of the word; the curly quote ’ and the straight ' look almost the same and are what people often type, but they can split the word in search, sorting and spell-checking.

Watch for look-alikes when you copy: Ɛ ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, Ɔ is not the reversed c Ↄ, and Unicode has two schwa pairs, ə with capital Ə (used here, as in other Cameroonian alphabets in Unicode's locale data) and the turned e ǝ with capital Ǝ. Pick one pair and keep to it in a document.

Tone marks: á à â ǎ and ɛ́ ɔ̀ ə̂ ʉ̌

Ghomala' is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of a word, so the alphabet marks tone with accents over vowels. In the Cameroonian system the acute ´ marks a high tone (á), the grave ` a low tone (à), the circumflex ˆ a falling tone (â) and the caron ˇ a rising tone (ǎ). The name Ghɔmáláʼ shows the acute on its two high-tone a's. A nasal that forms a syllable on its own can carry a tone too, which is why ḿ, ń and ǹ are part of the set.

For a e i o u and for m and n, Unicode has ready-made accented letters, all in the grid. For ɛ, ɔ, ə and ʉ it does not, so the accent is a separate combining mark typed straight after the letter: ɛ followed by the combining acute gives ɛ́, ɔ with the combining grave gives ɔ̀. The two characters then display as one letter in any modern font. If the mark lands beside the letter instead of over it, the font lacks support; switch to a font such as Noto Sans, Charis SIL or Gentium, which are made for African alphabets.

How to type Ghomala letters on a keyboard and phone

The simplest way on any device is a free Cameroon keyboard from Keyman, which exists for Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone in both AZERTY and QWERTY versions and puts ɛ ɔ ə ʉ ŋ ʼ and the tone marks on keys. Without one, copy the letters from the grid above.

In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the code and press Alt+X: 025B ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ, 0259 ə, 018F Ə, 0289 ʉ, 0244 Ʉ, 014B ŋ, 014A Ŋ and 02BC ʼ; the combining tone marks are 0301 high, 0300 low, 0302 falling and 030C rising, typed after the letter. With the US-International layout, ' then a gives á, then a gives à and ^ then a gives â; on a Mac with the US layout, Option+E, Option+ and Option+I followed by the vowel do the same.

On a phone, long-press a vowel to get é è ê and the other accented forms that the keyboard offers; the extra letters ɛ ɔ ə ʉ ŋ usually need a keyboard app or copy and paste. In HTML, write ɛ for ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, ə for ə, ʉ for ʉ, ŋ for ŋ and ʼ for ʼ.

Where Ghomala' is spoken

Ghomala' is spoken in the West Region of Cameroon, in the Bamileke highlands around Bafoussam, the regional capital, and in chiefdoms such as Bandjoun, Baham and Bamendjou. The CLDR population data estimates roughly 430,000 speakers, all of them in Cameroon. French is the language of school and administration in the region, so many speakers also read and write French, and Ghomala' texts can follow French habits such as « » quotation marks.

It belongs to the Bamileke group of Grassfields Bantu languages. Its neighbours and relatives have their own collections on this site: Yemba (around Dschang), Ngiemboon and Medumba (around Bangangté) use the same Cameroonian letters, and the Bamun collection covers the language of Foumban to the north-east, famous for King Njoya's own script. The Cameroon collection gathers the country's flag 🇨🇲, emoji and the letters of all its main languages, and the French collection has é è ç for one of Cameroon's two official languages.