Fulfulde Alphabet (Nigerian Fulani)

Fulfulde is the language of the Fulɓe, the people English and Hausa call the Fulani; one person is a Pullo. The Latin spelling used for it in Nigeria goes back to the UNESCO meeting held in Bamako in 1966, which settled common letters for several West African languages. The single-character letters listed here are A B Ɓ C D Ɗ E F G H I J K L M N Ŋ O P R S T U W Y, each with a capital and a small form; Nigerian spelling writes glottalised y as ʼy and the glottal stop as ʼ. Q, V, X and Z are not in this list, and the three added single letters are ɓ, ɗ and ŋ.

The plain letters are read in a regular way. C is always the ch of church and j the j of jam, g is always hard, and r is rolled or tapped. A long vowel is written twice, as in pulaaku, the Fulɓe code of patience and self-restraint, and a long consonant is written twice too, as in Pullo. The pairs mb, nd, ng and nj at the start of a word are single sounds, as in ndiyam (water), and the sound of Spanish ñ is spelled ny in Nigeria, where Senegal writes ñ and Mali ɲ.

What Ɓ ɓ, Ɗ ɗ, ʼY ʼy, Ŋ ŋ and ʼ do

Ɓ ɓ and Ɗ ɗ are implosives: the b and d are made while the voice box drops and air is drawn briefly inward, which gives them a hollow, swallowed sound. They are not rare: Fulɓe needs ɓ, and ɗiɗi (two) has two ɗ. Nigerian spelling writes the glottalised y sound as ʼy, as in ʼyiiʼyam (blood). Plain b and d are different sounds from ɓ and ɗ and can make different words, so use the hooked letters and ʼy in books, names and searchable text.

Ŋ ŋ is the ng of English sing, written with one letter. The apostrophe marks a glottal stop, the catch in the throat between the vowels of English uh-oh, as in go’o (one) and na’i (cattle). The correct character is the modifier letter apostrophe ʼ, which software treats as part of the word, but most people type the ordinary ’ or ', and both are understood.

Unlike Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, Fulfulde is not a tonal language, so it needs no accents at all. Look-alikes to avoid: Ɗ (D with hook) is not Ɖ (the African D of Ewe) or Đ (D with stroke), and ɓ is not ƀ (b with stroke).

How to type ɓ, ɗ, ŋ and ʼy on a keyboard

On a phone, Keyman has free Fulfulde keyboards for Android and iPhone, and a Hausa keyboard also carries ɓ and ɗ because Hausa needs them too. Otherwise copy the letters from the grid above.

On a Windows PC in Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 0253 gives ɓ, 0181 Ɓ, 0257 ɗ, 018A Ɗ, 014B ŋ, 014A Ŋ and 02BC ʼ. Type y after ʼ for Nigerian ʼy (or uppercase Y at the start of a word). For typing in every program, install a free Fulfulde keyboard layout through Keyman. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same four-digit codes.

In HTML, write ɓ for ɓ, Ɓ for Ɓ, ɗ for ɗ, Ɗ for Ɗ, ŋ for ŋ, Ŋ for Ŋ, ʼY for ʼY, ʼy for ʼy and ʼ for ʼ. Most modern system fonts draw them, but some decorative fonts lack these letters, in which case the browser or app falls back to another font.

Quotes, prices and the older scripts

Printed Fulfulde in Nigeria follows English typography, so quotations sit in “double” and ‘single’ curly quotes, and prices are in naira, written with the naira sign: ₦1,000.

Latin letters are the newer way to write the language. Long before them, Fulfulde was written in Arabic script, called Ajami: in the early 19th century Shehu Usman ɗan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, and his daughter Nana Asma’u wrote poetry in Fulfulde with Arabic letters, and Islamic scholars still write it that way. A third script, Adlam, was created in Guinea in 1989 by the brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry and added to Unicode in 2016; it is used above all for Pular in Guinea and among Fulɓe abroad.

Where Nigerian Fulfulde is spoken

Nigerian Fulfulde is spoken across northern Nigeria 🇳🇬, from Sokoto in the northwest to Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa in the east, and by pastoral Fulɓe who move their herds far to the south. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 16 million speakers. Many Fulɓe in the north also speak Hausa, and in the old towns of the north many families of Fulɓe descent now speak Hausa first.

Fulfulde is one language spread across the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan, with varieties that differ in sounds and words. Its relatives have their own collections: Fula, which covers the Pulaar and Pular of Senegal, Guinea and Mauritania, and Maasina Fulfulde of Mali. Its neighbours in Nigeria, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo among them, have theirs too, and the Nigeria collection gathers the country's flag and emoji.