Serer Alphabet (Seereer Language)

Serer, spelled Seereer in its own alphabet and sérère in French, is the language of the Serer people of west-central Senegal, the country of the old kingdoms of Sine and Saloum. The variety usually meant by "the Serer language" is Serer-Sine (Seereer-Siin), with its dialects along the Petite Côte, in Sine around Fatick and in Saloum. Serer was one of the six national languages covered by Senegal's common Latin transcription alphabet in 1971, alongside Wolof, Pulaar, Jola, Mandinka and Soninke; Seereer-specific spelling rules were set separately in 1975 and revised in 2005.

The Serer alphabet follows this Senegalese alphabetical order: A B Ɓ C Ƈ D Ɗ E F G H I J K L M N Ñ Ŋ O P Ƥ Q R S T Ƭ U W X Y Ƴ, and it also uses an apostrophe for the glottal stop. Each extra letter comes straight after the plain letter it is built on: Ɓ after B, Ƈ after C, Ɗ after D, Ñ and Ŋ after N, Ƥ after P, Ƭ after T and Ƴ after Y. The plain letters are read as in the other Senegalese spellings, not as in French: c is close to the ch of church, j to the j of jam, g is always hard, s is always the s of sun and x is a rough sound at the back of the mouth, like the ch of Scottish loch, as in Xooy. A long vowel is written twice, which is why the name of the language has a double e. Q is part of the Serer alphabet, standing for a uvular stop, as in nqeex; V and Z are not part of the standard alphabet.

What Ɓ Ɗ Ƴ, Ƥ Ƭ Ƈ, Ñ and Ŋ do in Serer

The hooked letters write implosives, stops made with a lowering larynx; in Seereer-Siin, measurements show that no positive oral pressure builds during closure. Ɓ ɓ, Ɗ ɗ and Ƴ ƴ are the voiced ones, a b, d and y with a gulp in them, the same letters and sounds as in Pulaar, Serer's closest relative. Serer-Sine goes further: it also has voiceless implosives, a very rare kind of consonant that only a few languages in the world are known to have, and its spelling writes them with the hooked Ƥ ƥ, Ƭ ƭ and Ƈ ƈ. A hooked letter is a different consonant from the plain one, so dropping the hook writes a different word.

Ñ ñ is one sound, the ny of canyon, as in Wolof and Spanish; Ŋ ŋ is the ng of English sing. Sounds such as mb, nd, nj and ng at the start of a word, very common in Senegalese names like Ndiaye and places like Mbour in French spelling, are written with two ordinary letters and need nothing extra to type.

Watch the look-alikes when you copy: Ɗ (D with hook) is not the crossed Đ of Croatian and Vietnamese, Ɓ is not the B with stroke Ƀ, and Ŋ is not the Greek eta η. Ƴ ƴ is drawn with its hook on the right arm, and some fonts show the capital Ƴ with the hook to the right of a plain Y shape; it is still the same letter, U+01B3.

How to type Serer letters: ɓ ɗ ƴ, ƥ ƭ ƈ, ñ and ŋ

On a phone, long-press n for ñ on most Android and iPhone keyboards. The hooked letters and ŋ are not on the standard keyboards; a keyboard app that supports Pulaar or other Senegalese languages puts ɓ ɗ ƴ and ŋ on long-press, while ƥ ƭ ƈ are rarer, so the simplest way is to copy them from the grid above and save each as a text replacement.

In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the letter's code and press Alt+X: 0253 ɓ, 0181 Ɓ, 0257 ɗ, 018A Ɗ, 01B4 ƴ, 01B3 Ƴ, 01A5 ƥ, 01A4 Ƥ, 01AD ƭ, 01AC Ƭ, 0188 ƈ, 0187 Ƈ, 014B ŋ and 014A Ŋ. For ñ hold Alt and type 0241 on the number pad (0209 for Ñ). French AZERTY layouts can type ñ with a tilde dead key, but they have no dedicated keys for the hooked letters or ŋ.

On a Mac, press Option+N and then n for ñ. For the hooked letters and ŋ, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same four-digit code, for example Option+0253 for ɓ. In HTML, write ñ for ñ, ŋ for ŋ and Ŋ for Ŋ; the hooked letters have no named entity, so use the number: ɓ ɓ, ɗ ɗ, ƴ ƴ, ƥ ƥ, ƭ ƭ, ƈ ƈ.

Quotes and prices in Serer texts

Printed Serer in Senegal follows French typography, so a quotation sits between guillemets with a space inside: « Seereer ». Prices in Senegal are in West African CFA francs, which have no symbol of their own and are written after the amount as 1 000 F CFA or 1 000 FCFA; in The Gambia they are in dalasi, written D or GMD.

Where the Serer language is spoken

Serer is spoken mainly in Senegal 🇸🇳: in the Fatick region around the old kingdom of Sine, in Saloum around Kaolack, along the Petite Côte from Mbour to Joal, and around Thiès, with many speakers in Dakar. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 2 million speakers in Senegal, which makes Serer one of the country's largest languages after Wolof and Pulaar; there is also a Serer community in The Gambia 🇬🇲. Many Serer speak Wolof as well, and Wolof and French words mix into everyday Serer speech.

Serer belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo family, and its closest relative is Fula, more distant ones Wolof and Jola. Several peoples around Thiès who are also called Serer speak quite different languages, the Cangin group, among them Saafi-Saafi, Noon, Ndut, Lehar and Palor. The Wolof, Fula, Saafi-Saafi, Jola-Fonyi and French collections on this site have their own alphabets, and the Senegal and Gambia collections gather the flags and emoji of the two countries.