Symbols
66Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Mooré alphabet
One row per letter, in Mooré alphabetical order. Ɛ ɛ follows E, Ɩ ɩ follows I and Ʋ ʋ follows U; the nasal vowels ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ sit beside their plain vowels. Long vowels are written double (naaba, yibeoogo) and tone is not marked.
Quotation marks
Mooré print in Burkina Faso follows French typography and quotes with guillemets.
Where it's spoken
Mooré is the language of the Mossi of central Burkina Faso. The CFA franc used there has no Unicode sign of its own: prices are written F CFA.
Mossi tradition
The stallion of Princess Yennenga and her son Wedraogo (Ouédraogo), the crown of the Moog Naaba, and the drums of the royal courts.
On the map
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The Mooré alphabet: Latin letters plus ɛ, ɩ and ʋ
Mooré, also written Moore or Mòoré, is the language of the Mossi: one Mossi person is a Moaaga, the people are the Moose, and their homeland on the central plateau of Burkina Faso is Moogo. It is written in the Latin alphabet under the national orthography of Burkina Faso, which gives each sound one spelling and has its own vowel letters Ɛ ɛ, Ɩ ɩ and Ʋ ʋ.
The three added vowel letters are vowels; Mooré also marks its glottal stop with an apostrophe. ɛ (capital Ɛ) is the open e. ɩ (capital Ɩ) and ʋ (capital Ʋ) are the relaxed i and u, close to the vowels of English bit and put, while plain i and u are the tense vowels of beet and boot. The difference changes words, so a Mooré text needs both. In the grid each extra letter stands right after its plain partner, which is where it comes in Mooré alphabetical order.
Nasal vowels, long vowels and tone
A tilde over a vowel makes it nasal, said partly through the nose like the vowel of French vin: ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ. It appears in some of the most common words of the language, such as Wẽnd and Wẽnnaam, God. The tilde letters are ordinary precomposed Unicode characters (ã and õ come from Latin-1, ĩ and ũ from Latin Extended-A, ẽ from Latin Extended Additional), but not every font contains all of these characters.
A long vowel is written twice: naaba, chief, yibeoogo, morning, Moaaga. Mooré is a tonal language, but everyday spelling leaves tone unmarked and readers fill it in from context; that is why the language's own name turns up both as Mooré and as Mòoré, with a grave accent showing the low tone of its first syllable.
Ɩ ɩ and Ʋ ʋ: real letters, not Greek look-alikes
ɩ is LATIN SMALL LETTER IOTA and ʋ is LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH HOOK ; their capitals are Ɩ and Ʋ . They look like the Greek letters iota ι and upsilon υ, but they are separate characters, and a word typed with the Greek ones will not be found by search engines or spell checkers. Copy them from this page rather than from a Greek keyboard.
The same letters serve other languages of the region, such as Kabiyè in Togo. Ewe in Ghana and Togo also writes ʋ, but there it is a consonant, a v made with both lips, while in Mooré it is a vowel. The capital Ɩ is easy to confuse with a capital I or a small l in many fonts, so when it matters, copy it from the grid.
How to type the Mooré letters
On Windows, type the hex code and press AltX in Word: 025B for ɛ, 0190 for Ɛ, 0269 for ɩ, 0196 for Ɩ, 028B for ʋ, 01B2 for Ʋ, 1EBD for ẽ, 0129 for ĩ and 0169 for ũ. The Latin-1 tilde vowels also have classic Alt codes on the number pad: Alt0227 ã, Alt0245 õ, Alt0195 Ã and Alt0213 Õ.
On a Mac with the US or ABC layout, OptionN followed by a or o gives ã and õ; the other letters are in the Character Viewer , or can be copied from here. In HTML you can write ã, õ, ĩ and ũ, and numeric references for the rest: ɛ ɛ, ɩ ɩ, ʋ ʋ, ẽ ẽ. On a phone, keyboards that include African languages offer these letters on long-press; otherwise keep this page open and copy them.
Where Mooré is spoken
Mooré is the most widely spoken language of Burkina Faso , with an estimated 9 million speakers by CLDR's count, centred on Ouagadougou, Ouahigouya, Kaya, Koudougou and the old Mossi kingdoms of the central plateau. The king of the Mossi of Ouagadougou, the Moog Naaba, still holds court there. Many Burkinabè of Mossi origin live in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, and Mooré is widely used as a second language across Burkina Faso, on the radio and in markets.
The country's own name owes half of itself to Mooré: Burkina is the Mooré word for upright, honest people, joined to Dyula Faso, fatherland. Mooré belongs to the Gur languages, in the same Oti-Volta branch as Frafra (Gurenɛ) across the border in Ghana. Its neighbours in Burkina Faso are Dyula, Fula and French, which is used for government and school and gives Mooré print its French quotation marks « ». Each of those languages has its own collection, and the Burkina Faso collection gathers the flag, the stallion and the country's emoji.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyMooré Alphabet (Mossi) combos
10Worth knowing
- Ouédraogo, the most common surname in Burkina Faso, is the French spelling of the Mooré name of Princess Yennenga's son, Wedraogo, "stallion".
- Burkina Faso's name mixes two languages: Burkina is Mooré for upright people and Faso is Dyula for fatherland.
- Ewe and Mooré both write ʋ, but in Ewe it is a consonant and in Mooré a vowel.
- Mooré is tonal, yet its standard spelling marks no tones; the grave in the spelling Mòoré is one of the few places a tone mark shows up.
Questions people ask
7What is the Mossi language alphabet?
Mooré is written in the Latin alphabet plus three extra vowel letters, Ɛ ɛ, Ɩ ɩ and Ʋ ʋ, with a tilde for the nasal vowels ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ. Long vowels are written double and tone is not marked. The vowel letters are in the grid above, ready to copy; the glottal stop is written with an apostrophe.
How to type ʋ?
Copy ʋ or Ʋ from this page, or in Word type 028B (01B2 for the capital) and press AltX. In HTML use ʋ. Use this Latin letter, not the Greek upsilon υ.
How to type ɩ?
Copy ɩ or Ɩ from the grid, or in Word type 0269 (0196 for the capital) and press AltX. In HTML use ɩ. It is not the Greek iota ι.
How to type ɛ?
In Word type 025B and press AltX (0190 for the capital Ɛ), use ɛ in HTML, or copy it from the grid above.
How to say hello in Mooré?
In the morning say Ne y yibeoogo; people then ask after each other's health with Laafi? and answer Laafi bala. Thank you is Barka.
Is Mooré the same as Mossi?
Yes. Mooré (Moore, Mòoré) is the name of the language, and Mossi is the name of the people who speak it; English often calls the language Mossi too.
How many people speak Mooré?
About 9 million people in Burkina Faso speak it by CLDR's estimate, which makes it the country's most widely spoken language, and many more use it as a second language.
