Mende Alphabet & Kikakui Script

Mende is written today in a Latin alphabet of 27 entries in this order: A B D E Ɛ F G Gb H I J K Kp L M N Ny Ŋ O Ɔ P S T U V W Y. Twenty-four are single-character letters, each with a capital and a small form; Gb, Kp and Ny are digraphs. Three of the single-character letters are the open e Ɛ ɛ, placed after E, the eng Ŋ ŋ after N and the open o Ɔ ɔ after O.

Several Mende consonants are written with two ordinary letters that count as one sound. gb and kp are made at the lips and the back of the mouth at the same time, as in Kpa Mende, the name of the western variety, and in Gbandi; mb, nd, ng and nj begin with a short hum through the nose, as in the town of Njala; ny is the sound of Spanish ñ. None of them needs a special character, so the only letters you have to copy are ɛ, ɔ and ŋ.

Mende is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable, high or low or gliding between them, can tell words apart. Dictionaries and linguistic studies mark tone with accents, but everyday Mende writing leaves it unmarked, so letters with accents are not part of the standard alphabet.

What Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and Ŋ ŋ do

Mende has seven vowels and the Latin alphabet only five vowel letters. Ɛ ɛ is the open e, close to the vowel of English bed, while plain e is higher, nearer French é; Ɔ ɔ is the open o, close to the vowel of British law, while plain o is higher, as in go. Ŋ ŋ is the ng sound at the end of English sing, written as one letter.

All three come from the International Phonetic Alphabet, where they stand for these very sounds, and the same letters are used in Krio, Temne, Kpelle and many other languages of West Africa. Watch the look-alikes: ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, Ɔ is not the reversed c Ↄ, and ŋ is not ɲ, the n with a left hook that some other alphabets use for the ny sound. They may look the same in one font, but search engines and spell checkers treat them as different letters.

Mende Kikakui script

Besides the Latin alphabet, Mende has a script of its own. Kikakui began around 1917 with a 42-character version devised by the Islamic scholar Mohamed Turay; his student and son-in-law Kisimi Kamara expanded it with over 150 more signs and popularized it. Its name comes from its first three signs read aloud, 𞠀 ki, 𞠁 ka, 𞠂 ku. It is a syllabary: each sign stands for a whole syllable such as ba, kpe or ndo, and it is written from right to left, like Arabic.

Kikakui was added to Unicode in version 7.0 in 2014, in its own block from U+1E800 to U+1E8DF. That block holds 197 syllable signs, nine digits 𞣇 to 𞣏 and seven marks 𞣐 to 𞣖 that combine with a digit to turn it into tens, hundreds, thousands and so on up to millions. In the grid the syllables are set out by consonant, in the order of the Unicode chart; Unicode's names also carry catalogue numbers from M001 to M197, which follow a different order.

Few people read Kikakui today, and many phones and computers still have no font for it, so the signs may show as empty boxes. Install a font that covers the block, such as Noto Sans Mende Kikakui, and they appear; because the script runs right to left, a pasted line of Kikakui reads from the right edge.

How to type Mende letters and Kikakui

On a phone, the easiest way is to install a keyboard app with ɛ, ɔ and ŋ, or to copy them from the grid above. On a Windows PC in Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X straight after it: 025B gives ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ, 014B ŋ and 014A Ŋ. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same four-digit codes. For everyday typing in every program, a West African keyboard layout that includes these letters, such as those available through Keyman, saves the codes.

The same Alt+X trick works for Kikakui with five-digit codes: 1E800 gives 𞠀 ki, 1E801 𞠁 ka, 1E802 𞠂 ku. In HTML, write ɛ for ɛ, Ɛ for Ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, Ɔ for Ɔ, ŋ for ŋ, Ŋ for Ŋ, and 𞠀 and onwards for Kikakui.

Where the Mende language is spoken

Mende is one of the two largest languages of Sierra Leone, together with Temne. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 2.6 million speakers: some 2.5 million in Sierra Leone, mainly in the south and east around Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, Pujehun, Moyamba and Bonthe, and around 90,000 across the border in Liberia. Many more Sierra Leoneans understand it as a second language, and Krio is what most people share across the country.

Mende belongs to the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo family; its close relatives include Kpelle, Loma and Bandi, and Vai is a more distant cousin that also has a syllabary of its own. For the other languages of the region see the Krio, Timne, Kpelle, Vai and Liberian English collections; for the flags, currencies and emoji see Sierra Leone and Liberia.