Saafi-Saafi Alphabet (Saafi Language)

Saafi-Saafi, or simply Saafi, is the language of the people known as Serer-Safen (Sereer Safen, Safène in French). It is written in the Latin alphabet with a Saafi-specific orthography codified by Senegal; the national languages have separate spelling systems and language-specific sound values: c is a voiceless alveo-palatal stop, not the ch affricate in church, j is the j of jam, g is always hard, s is always the s of sun, and a long vowel or a long consonant is written twice, as in the name Saafi itself.

The grid lists the letters in Senegalese alphabetical order: A B Ɓ C D Ɗ E F G H I J K L M N Ñ Ŋ O P R S T U W Y Ƴ ’. Each extra letter comes straight after the plain letter it is built on: Ɓ after B, Ɗ after D, Ñ and Ŋ after N, Ƴ after Y. Q, V, X and Z are not part of the alphabet. Sounds such as mb, nd, nj and ng at the start of a word are written with two ordinary letters, so they need nothing extra to type.

What Ɓ, Ɗ, Ƴ, Ñ and Ŋ stand for

Ɓ ɓ, Ɗ ɗ and Ƴ ƴ represent Saafi's implosive phonemes /ɓ/, /ɗ/ and /ʄ/ respectively; ƴ is a voiced palatal implosive, not the /j/ sound written with y. English has none of these sounds. They are letters of their own, not decorated ones, because they tell words apart from plain b, d and y. The same three letters are used for Pulaar and Serer, and implosives run through the whole Cangin family to which Saafi belongs.

Ñ ñ is one sound, the ny of canyon, the same letter as in Wolof and Spanish. Ŋ ŋ (eng) is the ng of English sing written as a single letter, and in Senegalese languages it can begin a word, which English never does.

Watch the look-alikes when you copy: Ɗ is not Đ (D with stroke) or the Icelandic Ð, ŋ is not the Greek eta η, and Ƴ ƴ carries its hook on the upper right, unlike a plain y. Copying from the grid gives the right characters every time.

How to type Saafi letters: ɓ, ɗ, ƴ, ñ and ŋ

On a phone, ñ is under a long-press of n on the standard Android and iPhone keyboards. For ɓ, ɗ, ƴ and ŋ, add a keyboard app with a Wolof, Pulaar or West African layout that supports them, or copy them from the grid and save them as text replacements.

On Windows, ñ is Alt+164 and Ñ Alt+165 on the number pad. For the others in Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 0253 gives ɓ, 0181 Ɓ, 0257 ɗ, 018A Ɗ, 01B4 ƴ, 01B3 Ƴ, 014B ŋ and 014A Ŋ. A free keyboard layout, for example through Keyman, makes them available in every program. On a Mac, press Option+N and then n for ñ; for the rest, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same codes.

In HTML, write ɓ for ɓ, Ɓ for Ɓ, ɗ for ɗ, Ɗ for Ɗ, ƴ for ƴ, Ƴ for Ƴ, ñ for ñ, Ñ for Ñ, ŋ for ŋ and Ŋ for Ŋ.

Quotes and prices in Saafi texts

Printed text in Senegal follows French typography, so a quotation sits between guillemets with a space inside: « Saafi ». Prices are in West African CFA francs, whose CLDR symbol is F CFA (with a narrow no-break space) and which are also written after amounts as 1 000 F CFA or 1 000 FCFA, so the grid has no currency sign.

Where the Saafi language is spoken

Saafi is spoken in Senegal 🇸🇳, in villages of the Thiès Region southeast of Dakar, in the low hills around Diass, where the capital's new international airport now stands. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 280,000 speakers; some speakers also live in Dakar, where Wolof and French are widely used.

Saafi speakers are counted among the Serer, but their language is not a dialect of Serer: it is one of the Cangin languages, a small family with Noon, Laalaa (Lehar), Ndut and Palor, all spoken around Thiès, and Serer from the Sine is not mutually intelligible with Saafi. Its neighbours have collections of their own here, among them Wolof, Fula and Jola-Fonyi, and the Senegal collection gathers the country's flag and emoji.