Symboler
77Klik på et symbol for at kopiere det og åbne dets side.
Sango alphabet
One row per letter in Sango alphabetical order. Only the vowels take accents: the circumflex and the diaeresis are Sango's tone marks, and the plain vowel is the third tone. Ù is in CLDR's list of Sango letters but is not one of the two tone marks.
Quotation marks
Printed Sango follows French habits, with « guillemets »; curly quotes and the apostrophe ’ are common online.
Where it's spoken
The Central African Republic, where Sango is the national language and, with French, an official one. The CFA franc used there has no sign of its own; it is written FCFA after the amount.
Tied to the language
🛶 for the Ubangi River, along which Sango grew up as a trade language; 🗣️ for a language that is spoken far more than it is written.
På kortet
Indlæser…
The Sango language alphabet from A to Z
Sango is written in the Latin alphabet, in the order a b d e f g h i k l m n o p r s t u v w y z, each letter with a capital and a small form. Its official alphabet has 22 base letters; J, C, Q and X are excluded, though they can appear in proper names and foreign words. Every vowel can also appear with a circumflex or a diaeresis, which is why the grid shows A Â Ä, E Ê Ë, I Î Ï, O Ô Ö and U Û Ü side by side. Unicode's CLDR list of Sango letters, which this page follows, also includes Ù ù, but it is not one of Sango's two tone marks.
Many Sango words begin with consonant pairs that are written with two ordinary letters: gb and kp, sounds made at the lips and the back of the mouth at once, and the nasal spellings mb, nd, ng, ny and nz, as in Nzapa (God) and nzönî (good). They need no special characters, but they are part of reading Sango aloud.
All the accented letters Sango needs sit in the Latin-1 block of Unicode, the same block that holds French â, ë and ô. That makes Sango one of the easiest African languages to type: any font, keyboard or website that handles French handles every Sango letter.
Sango tones: what â and ä do
Sango is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable is part of the word. The standard spelling shows tone on the vowel. A vowel can be written plain, with a circumflex (â) or with a diaeresis (ä), one form for each of the language's tones. The name of the language itself shows both marks: Sängö, and the phrase for the Sango language is yângâ tî Sängö.
The marks are part of the official spelling, but their use in published Sango is uneven: literacy materials use tone marks, while religious publications mark tone on only a few words. You will see them in names such as Ködörösêse tî Bêafrîka, the Sango name of the Central African Republic. In everyday texting and on social media many people leave them out and write sango, singila or Beafrika; readers understand from context.
Two look-alikes are worth knowing. The Sango diaeresis is the same character as the German umlaut and the French tréma, so ö here is simply U00F6; there is no separate Sango letter. And standard Sango writes only the five vowel letters a e i o u, so the African letters ɛ and ɔ used in Lingala are not part of it.
How to type Sango letters â ä ê ë î ï ô ö û ü
On a phone, long-press a vowel: the circumflex and diaeresis forms are in the pop-up on French and English keyboards alike.
On a French keyboard (AZERTY), press the key, then the vowel, for â ê î ô û; press Shift (the key), then the vowel, for ä ë ï ö ü. With the US-International layout on Windows, type then the vowel for the circumflex and " then the vowel for the diaeresis. With Alt codes on the number pad: Alt0226 â, Alt0228 ä, Alt0234 ê, Alt0235 ë, Alt0238 î, Alt0239 ï, Alt0244 ô, Alt0246 ö, Alt0251 û, Alt0252 ü, Alt0249 ù; the capitals are Alt0194 Â, Alt0196 Ä, Alt0202 Ê, Alt0203 Ë, Alt0206 Î, Alt0207 Ï, Alt0212 Ô, Alt0214 Ö, Alt0219 Û, Alt0220 Ü, Alt0217 Ù.
On a Mac, OptionI then a vowel gives the circumflex (â), OptionU then a vowel the diaeresis (ä), and Option then u gives ù. Add Shift to the vowel for the capital.
In HTML the named entities are short: â â, ä ä, ê ê, ë ë, î î, ï ï, ô ô, ö ö, û û, ü ü, with a capital first letter (Â) for the capitals.
Where Sango is spoken
Sango is the language of the Central African Republic . It grew up as a trade language along the Ubangi River, built on the Ngbandi language with many words taken later from French, and spread across the country until nearly everyone could speak it. Today it is the national language and, together with French, an official language of the country. CLDR estimates about 2.8 million speakers; for many it is a second language next to their own, while in Bangui, the capital, many children now grow up with Sango as their first.
That makes the Central African Republic a country where an African language, not a colonial one, is the language almost the whole country shares. French remains the language of much schooling and government and the dominant written language; Sango is primarily spoken despite its official orthography. See our French collection for é è ç and the rest, and our Central African Republic collection for the country's emoji. Lingala, spoken just across the Ubangi in DR Congo, has its own collection too.
How to use them
5 situationsKlik for at kopiereSango Alphabet & Letters combos
11Godt at vide
- The language writes its own name with two diaeresis marks: Sängö.
- In the Central African Republic, nearly the whole population speaks one African language, Sango, alongside the many local languages.
- Every accented Sango letter is in Unicode's Latin-1 block, borrowed from French and German, so Sango needs no character that a French keyboard cannot type.
- The national anthem has words in both official languages: La Renaissance in French and E Zingo in Sango.
Ofte stillede spørgsmål
6What is the Sango alphabet?
a b d e f g h i k l m n o p r s t u v w y z, in capital and small form: the official alphabet has 22 letters, omitting j, c, q and x. The vowels also appear with a circumflex (â ê î ô û) or a diaeresis (ä ë ï ö ü), which mark tone.
What do the accents in Sango mean?
They mark tone. Sango is a tonal language, and a vowel is written plain, with a circumflex or with a diaeresis depending on its tone, as in Sängö and yângâ.
How do I type Sango letters on a keyboard?
On a phone, long-press the vowel. On a French keyboard, press or and then the vowel. On Windows, Alt0226 gives â and Alt0228 ä; on a Mac, OptionI or OptionU and then the vowel.
How to say hello in Sango?
Balaô. To greet a group, say Bara ala; to say thank you, Singîla.
Where is the Sango language spoken?
In the Central African Republic, where it is the national language and, with French, an official one, spoken across nearly the whole country. CLDR estimates about 2.8 million speakers.
Is Sango a written language?
Yes. An official Latin orthography was adopted in 1984, and Sango appears in religious publications and literacy materials, though it remains primarily spoken and is used much less in print than French.
