Krio Alphabet

Krio grew out of English, but it is spelled as it sounds, not as English is spelled. The standard spelling, the one used in the Krio Bible, in dictionaries and in literacy classes, writes Krio with these single letters: A B D E Ɛ F G H I J K L M N Ŋ O Ɔ P R S T U V W Y Z, each in capital and small form. Ɛ comes right after E, Ŋ after N and Ɔ after O. Q and X are not used, and C turns up only in the pair ch.

The consonant combinations ch (chɔch, church), sh, ny (as in nyu, new), gb and kp represent single sounds; zh also occurs in a few words, as in plɛzhɔ (pleasure). The gb and kp sounds, shared with Mende, Temne and many other West African languages, are made with the lips and the back of the tongue closing at the same moment. These spellings need no special characters, so the grid above has everything you need to write any Krio word.

What Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and Ŋ ŋ do in Krio

Krio has seven vowels and only five vowel letters in A–Z, so two letters from the phonetic alphabet fill the gap. Ɛ ɛ is the open e of English bed, as in tɛnki (thank you) and lɛk (like); plain e is the closer vowel of day, as in wetin (what). Ɔ ɔ is the open o of British law, as in bɔdi (body) and gɔd; plain o is the o of go. Writing the difference is what makes the spelling phonetic: Aw di bɔdi? is read exactly as it is said.

Ŋ ŋ, called eng, stands for the ng sound of English sing, one sound rather than n plus g. Krio, like Mende and Temne, uses it in the standard spelling, although many people still write ng in texts.

Krio uses pitch to tell some words apart, but everyday Krio writing does not mark tone, so there are no accented letters to learn. Watch the look-alikes: ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, ɔ is not a reversed c ↄ, and ŋ is not n with a comma. Some people writing Krio informally simply use e and o for everything; in names, schoolwork, Bible verses or anything that has to be searched, the real letters are better.

How to type Krio letters ɛ, ɔ and ŋ

On a phone, the quickest way is to copy the letters from the grid, or to add a keyboard app or layout that includes ɛ, ɔ and ŋ (check that its language list covers them). On a Windows PC in Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X right after it: 025B gives ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ, 014B ŋ and 014A Ŋ. For typing in every program, install a keyboard layout that has these letters, for example one of the free layouts available through Keyman.

On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input keyboard in System Settings, switch to it, hold Option and type the same four-digit codes. In HTML, write ɛ for ɛ, ɔ for ɔ and ŋ for ŋ (Ɛ, Ɔ and Ŋ for the capitals). Most modern fonts include all six letters.

Where Krio is spoken

Krio is the language that holds Sierra Leone 🇸🇱 together. It took shape in Freetown and became the mother tongue of the Krio people there, descendants of the freed Black settlers, Nova Scotians, Jamaican Maroons and liberated Africans who made the colony their home from the late eighteenth century, and it took words from English, from Yoruba and other African languages, and from Portuguese. Today it is the first language of a minority and the second language of almost everyone else: Unicode's CLDR estimates about 8.7 million speakers, close to the whole population. In Krio the country itself is Salone.

English stays the official language of schools and government, while Krio is heard in markets, on the radio, in songs, in politics and in church. The leone’s current prefix is NLe.; coins use c. Krio's close relatives are the English-based creoles and pidgins of the West African coast, among them the Aku Krio of the Gambia, Pichi on Bioko in Equatorial Guinea, Cameroonian Pidgin and Nigerian Pidgin. For the flag, the leone and Sierra Leone's emoji, see the Sierra Leone collection; for the country's other big languages, see Mende and Timne, and for Krio's parent language, English.