Punu Language (Yipunu)

Punu has no letter list in Unicode's CLDR, the database phones and computers take language data from, and its spelling is less settled than that of French, Gabon's official language. Published Yipunu proposals use the Latin script, but do not all use the same inventory. One proposal counts 33 graphemes, including long vowels written aa, ee, ii, oo, uu and consonant digraphs such as gh, mb, nd, ng, ny, nz and ts, so the 20 letters on this page are only a selection.

In one published proposal, the five vowels a, e, i, o and u each have a long counterpart, written by doubling the vowel (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu). Many words start with a nasal joined to the next consonant, written as two letters: mb, nd, ng, nz, and ny for the ny of canyon. That is why so many names of southern Gabon begin with M or N followed by a consonant, as in Mboumba, Ndendé, Ngounié or Nyanga.

Like the other Bantu languages of Gabon, Punu is tonal: the pitch of a syllable is part of a word. Everyday writing does not mark tone, and readers tell words apart from context. Linguists who write Punu tones use accents such as á and à, but those belong to dictionaries and research, not to messages or signs.

Bapounou or Bapunu? French spelling against Punu spelling

The same word often appears in two spellings. French has no single letter for the u sound of Punu, so French writes it ou, and that is how the names reached maps, passports and books: Bapounou, Yipounou, Mouila. Writing in the language itself uses a plain u: Bapunu for the Punu people, Yipunu for the language. Surnames common in southern Gabon such as Moussavou, Mboumba and Koumba keep their French spelling on official papers.

The prefixes do work of their own, as in other Bantu languages: yi- in Yipunu marks the language, ba- in Bapunu the people. The Alphabet scientifique des langues du Gabon (ASG), published in 1990 after a 1989 seminar, proposed a shared scientific alphabet; the Orthographe des langues du Gabon (OLG) later published orthographic recommendations in 1999. Yipunu has multiple written proposals, including ones that double long vowels and use consonant digraphs.

French names and places with accents, such as Ndendé or Ngounié, need é and è: those are in the French collection.

How to type Punu, and the quotation marks « »

Every Punu letter is on any keyboard, French AZERTY or English QWERTY, so the language needs no special layout. What Gabonese texts do need is French punctuation: « guillemets » around quotations, with a space inside them in careful French typography, and “curly quotes” for a quotation inside a quotation.

To type « and » on Windows, hold Alt and type 0171 or 0187 on the number pad. On a Mac, Option+\ gives « and Option+Shift+\ gives ». On a phone, long-press the " key. In HTML, write « and ». Or copy them from the grid above.

Where the Punu language is spoken

Punu is the language of the Punu people, the Bapunu, one of the largest ethnic groups of Gabon 🇬🇦. Their home is the south of the country, the provinces of Ngounié and Nyanga, around Mouila on the Ngounié River and Tchibanga, and many Punu speakers live in Libreville. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 220,000 speakers in Gabon. The Punu homeland continues across the border into the Republic of the Congo 🇨🇬, in the Niari department.

Punu belongs to a small group of closely related Bantu languages of southern Gabon, together with Sira (Eshira) and Lumbu. Most Punu speakers also speak French, Gabon's official language, and many speak other Gabonese languages. The Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville collections have the flags and the country emoji; the Fang, Kongo and Lingala collections cover other big languages of the region.