N'Ko Alphabet

N'Ko (ߒߞߏ) is an alphabet made in 1949 by the Guinean scholar Solomana Kanté for the Manding languages of West Africa: Maninka in Guinea, Bambara in Mali, Dyula in Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso, Mandinka in the Gambia and Senegal. Its name means "I say" in all of them. Kanté wanted Manding speakers to read and write in their own language instead of only in French or Arabic, and he went on to write a large body of books in it himself.

N'Ko is written right to left, and its letters join along a baseline, much as in Arabic, so a word is one connected line. Unlike Arabic, every vowel is a full letter, and tone, which Latin spellings of Manding usually leave out, is written with small marks. The core alphabet is usually counted as 27 letters: seven vowels, the syllabic nasal ߒ and nineteen consonants.

N'Ko is also the name of a language. CLDR, the Unicode locale data, lists N'Ko under the code nqo for the written standard Manding that N'Ko readers share across dialects, often called Kangbe (ߞߊ߲ߜߍ), "clear language". This page is the complete script; the Mandingo (N'Ko) and Bambara (N'Ko) collections show the letters each of those languages uses.

N'Ko letters: vowels, consonants and the extra letters

The seven vowels are ߊ a, ߋ e, ߌ i, ߍ ɛ, ߎ u, ߏ o and ߐ ɔ. The Unicode names can mislead: the letter named EE (ߋ) is the closed e and the one named E (ߍ) is the open ɛ; likewise OO (ߏ) is o and O (ߐ) is the open ɔ. Unicode files ߑ, the dagbasinna, right after the vowels.

Then comes ߒ, a syllabic n that can stand alone, as at the start of ߒߞߏ itself, and the consonants in N'Ko order: ߓ b, ߔ p, ߕ t, ߖ j, ߗ c, ߘ d, ߙ r, ߚ rr, ߛ s, ߜ gb, ߝ f, ߞ k, ߟ l, ߡ m, ߢ ɲ (ny), ߣ n, ߤ h, ߥ w and ߦ y. ߜ is named gba because Guinean Maninka has a gb sound; Bambara, which lacks it, reads the same letter as g.

Two woloso letters, ߠ na woloso and ߧ nya woloso, indicate n and ɲ consonants mutated by a preceding nasal; CLDR includes both in the N'Ko alphabet. The three jona letters ߨ ja, ߩ cha and ߪ ra are older letter forms that Unicode groups as archaic; you will meet them in early N'Ko texts rather than in today's writing, and CLDR leaves them out of the modern alphabet.

N'Ko tone marks, nasal vowels and other diacritics

Manding is tonal, and N'Ko marks tone over the vowel: ߫ short high, ߬ short low, ߭ short rising, ߯ long high, ߰ long low, ߱ long rising and ߮ long descending. A text marked throughout can be read aloud without guessing from context. ߲, a dot under the vowel, makes it nasal: ߞߊ߲ is kan, language. ߳, a double dot above, goes over some letters to spell sounds of borrowed words.

All of these are combining characters: copied alone they show over a dotted circle and attach to the letter right before them, so paste the letter first and the mark after it. The same holds for ߽, the dantayalan, which Unicode describes as used to abbreviate units of measure. The two tonal apostrophes ߴ (high) and ߵ (low) stand where a vowel has been dropped and keep that vowel's tone. ߺ, the lajanyalan, can extend letters within a word to justify a line, like the Arabic tatweel. The phrases on this page are written without tone marks; a careful text adds them.

N'Ko punctuation, digits and money signs ߸ ؟ ߷ ߾

N'Ko has its own comma ߸ and exclamation mark ߹, and shares the right-to-left Arabic question mark ؟, comma ، and semicolon ؛. Unicode also lists the low paraphrase brackets ⸜ ⸝ as used in N'Ko, and the ornate parentheses ﴾ ﴿ as shared by Arabic and N'Ko. Two signs are N'Ko's own: ߷, the gbakurunen, marks the end of a major section of text, and its shape stands for the three stones that hold a cooking pot over a fire; ߶, the oo dennen, signals that the topic under discussion will be taken up later.

The N'Ko digits ߀ ߁ ߂ ߃ ߄ ߅ ߆ ߇ ߈ ߉ are 0 to 9. The money signs ߾ (dorome) and ߿ (taman) came into Unicode 11.0 in 2018, together with the dantayalan; everything else in the block dates from Unicode 5.0 in 2006. Guinea's own currency, the Guinean franc, has no Unicode sign and is written FG or GNF.

How to type N'Ko on a keyboard or phone

Windows has an N'Ko keyboard layout: add N'Ko under Settings, Time & language, Language & region, then switch layouts with Windows + Space. The Ebrima font that ships with Windows shows N'Ko, and Google's free Noto Sans NKo works on any system. Keyman offers N'Ko keyboards for Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone.

Copying from this page works everywhere: tap a character in the grid, then paste. Because N'Ko runs right to left, the cursor may seem to move the wrong way when you edit N'Ko mixed with Latin text; that is normal. The script lives in the Unicode block U+07C0 to U+07FF. In HTML, write a character by its number: ߊ gives ߊ, ߒ gives ߒ and ߸ gives the comma ߸.

Where the N'Ko alphabet is used

N'Ko is strongest in Guinea 🇬🇳, Kanté's own country, above all among Maninka speakers in Upper Guinea and the city of Kankan, where it is taught in schools and community classes and used in books, newspapers, radio and messages. CLDR estimates around 700,000 people in Guinea for N'Ko as a written language; the figure is an estimate, and many more Manding speakers read the script alongside French or Latin-letter spelling.

The same alphabet is used in Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia and the Manding diaspora. The Guinea collection has the country's flag, emoji and symbols; the Mandingo, Bambara and Dyula collections have those languages in Latin letters, and the Mandingo (N'Ko) and Bambara (N'Ko) collections pick out the N'Ko letters each one uses.