Medumba Alphabet

Medumba follows the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages, a shared writing system for Cameroon’s languages; the current Medumba orthography was adopted by CEPOM in 1985. It keeps the plain Latin letters the language needs and adds a few letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet for sounds that English and French have no letter for. The current alphabet runs A Ɑ B C D Ə E Ɛ F G Gh H I J K L M N Ŋ O Ɔ S Sh T Ts U Ʉ V W Ny Y Z ʼ. There is no p, q, r or x.

The language’s own name shows three of the special letters at once: Mə̀dʉ̂mbɑ̀ has a schwa ə, a barred u ʉ and, at the end, the Latin alpha ɑ, which is a different letter from a, not a font variant of it. Sounds written with two letters, such as ny or the nasal-plus-consonant groups mb, nd and ŋg that are everywhere in Bamileke words, need no special characters. Older primers can differ, but the current Medumba alphabet counts Gh, Sh, Ts and Ny as letters alongside the single-character letters.

What ɑ, ə, ɛ, ɔ, ʉ, ŋ and ʼ stand for

Each extra letter writes one sound. Ɑ ɑ (Latin alpha) is an a said further back in the mouth, as in British father, while plain a is the a of French la. Ə ə (schwa) is the short, relaxed vowel at the start of English about. Ɛ ɛ (open e) is close to the vowel of bed, and Ɔ ɔ (open o) to the vowel of British law; plain e and o are the closer vowels of French é and eau. Ʉ ʉ (barred u) is a u said with the tongue pushed forward, between French tout and tu. Ŋ ŋ (eng) is the ng of sing, and in Medumba it can begin a word.

The apostrophe-like ʼ is a letter, not punctuation: it writes the glottal stop, the catch in the throat in the middle of uh-oh. Its proper form is the modifier letter apostrophe ʼ (U+02BC), which software treats as part of the word; the curly ’ and the straight ' look the same but can split a word in search and sorting.

Watch the look-alikes: ɑ is not the Greek alpha α, and its capital Ɑ is a separate letter from A; ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε; ə with its capital Ə is the schwa pair used in Cameroonian alphabets, not the turned e ǝ with capital Ǝ; and ʉ is not ʊ or ü.

Medumba tone marks: à â ǎ and ə̀ ʉ̂ ɑ̀

Medumba is a tonal language: pitch distinguishes words, and its current spelling marks tone on vowels. Low tone takes a grave (à), falling tone a circumflex (â), and rising low-high tone a caron (ǎ); high tone is unmarked. The name Mə̀dʉ̂mbɑ̀ reads low, falling, low. A nasal that stands as a syllable of its own can carry a tone mark too, which is why ḿ, ń and ǹ are in the grid.

For a e i o u and for m and n, Unicode has ready-made accented letters for the written tones, and the ones the spelling needs are in the grid. For ɑ, ə, ɛ, ɔ and ʉ it has none, so the tone is a separate combining mark typed straight after the letter: ə followed by the combining grave gives ə̀, ʉ followed by the combining circumflex gives ʉ̂. The two characters then show as one letter in a font made for African alphabets, such as Noto Sans, Charis SIL or Gentium; if the mark lands beside the letter, change the font.

How to type Medumba letters: ə on a keyboard, iPhone or Mac

The easiest way on any device is a free Cameroon keyboard from Keyman, available for Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone in AZERTY and QWERTY versions, which puts the extra letters 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: 0251 ɑ, 2C6D Ɑ, 0259 ə, 018F Ə, 025B ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ, 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. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input source in Keyboard settings and hold Option while typing the same codes; with the ordinary US layout, Option+` and Option+I followed by a vowel give à and â.

On an iPhone or Android phone, long-press a vowel for é, è, ê and the other accents the keyboard offers; ə, ɑ, ʉ and the rest need a keyboard app, or copy them once and save them as text replacements with short triggers. In HTML, write ɑ for ɑ, ə for ə, ʉ for ʉ, ɛ for ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, ŋ for ŋ and ʼ for ʼ.

Where the Medumba language is spoken

Medumba is the language of the Ndé department in the West Region of Cameroon, centred on its chief town, Bangangté, and the chiefdoms around it in the Bamileke highlands; that is why it is sometimes simply called the Bangangté language. Unicode’s CLDR estimates roughly 340,000 speakers, all counted in Cameroon, and many more people of Ndé origin live in Douala, Yaoundé and abroad. French is the language of school and administration in the region, so many speakers write French too, and Medumba texts often follow French habits such as « » quotation marks and prices written 5 000 FCFA.

Medumba is one of the Bamileke languages, part of the Grassfields branch of the wider Bantu family. Its neighbours have their own collections here: Ghomala (around Bafoussam and Bandjoun), Yemba (around Dschang) and Ngiemboon use the same Cameroonian letters, and Bamun covers the language of Foumban with King Njoya’s own script. The Cameroon collection gathers the country’s flag 🇨🇲 and emoji, and the French collection has é è ç for the official language.