Soninke Alphabet (Sooninkanxanne)

Soninke calls itself Sooninkanxanne, the language of the Sooninke, the people French and English books long called Sarakolé or Sarakole. It is written in the Latin alphabet, using the official spellings that Mali, Senegal and Mauritania set for their national languages. The letters run a b c d e f g h i j k l m n, then the ny letter and ŋ, then o p q r s t u w x y. Q and X are real Soninke letters with their own sounds, while V and Z only turn up in foreign names.

The name of the language already shows the two habits that make Soninke spelling look unusual. A long vowel is written twice, so Sooninke begins with a long o, and the vowel letters a e i o u are the only five there are: unlike Bambara, Soninke does not need ɛ or ɔ. And x is not the ks of English but a rasping sound made at the back of the mouth, like the ch of Scottish loch or German Bach; it is the x in Sooninkanxanne.

Ɲ ɲ, Ñ ñ and Ŋ ŋ: the Soninke letters not on your keyboard

The ny sound of English canyon has one letter of its own in Soninke, but which one depends on the country. Mali writes all its national languages with Ɲ ɲ, the n with a hook on the left, the same letter Bambara uses. Senegal writes the sound with the Spanish-looking Ñ ñ, as Wolof and Pulaar do there. It is the same sound and the same letter in the alphabet's order, so the grid shows both side by side: use the one your readers' country uses, and keep to it within one text.

Ŋ ŋ, called eng, is the ng of English sing, one sound written with one letter, and it is the same in every country. When people type without these letters they write ny and nw instead, which is fine in a chat but makes a word hard to find again in a dictionary or a search.

Soninke is a tonal language, where the pitch of a syllable can tell words apart, but the standard spelling does not mark tone, so you will not need accented vowels to write it. Look-alikes to avoid: Ɲ ɲ is not ɳ, the phonetic letter with its hook on the right, and Ŋ is a letter of its own, not an N with a tail added by a font.

How to type ɲ, ñ and ŋ

Ñ ñ is the easy one, because Spanish needs it: on a phone, long-press n; on a Mac, press Option+N and then N; on Windows with the US-International layout, type ~ and then n, or hold Alt and type 0241 on the number pad (0209 for Ñ).

For ɲ and ŋ, in Microsoft Word type the code and press Alt+X: 0272 gives ɲ, 019D Ɲ, 014B ŋ and 014A Ŋ. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same codes. For typing everywhere, install a keyboard layout for Mali's or Senegal's languages, for example through Keyman, or copy the letters from the grid above.

In HTML, write ñ for ñ, Ñ for Ñ, ɲ for ɲ, Ɲ for Ɲ, and ŋ or ŋ for ŋ, Ŋ or Ŋ for Ŋ.

Where the Soninke language is spoken

The Soninke heartland lies in the upper Senegal River region; its communities extend into Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and The Gambia: the Kayes Region around Yélimané and the Nioro Region around Nioro du Sahel in western Mali 🇲🇱, the Bakel area of eastern Senegal 🇸🇳, the Guidimakha around Sélibaby in southern Mauritania 🇲🇷, and the Upper River around Basse in The Gambia 🇬🇲. Soninke is also spoken in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 1.3 million speakers in Mali alone; counts for all the countries together are higher, and large Soninke communities live abroad, above all in and around Paris, built by decades of migration from the river villages.

Soninke is a Mande language, but not a Manding one: speakers of Bambara and Mandingo do not understand it without learning it, and its nearest relatives are the Bozo languages of the Niger. Its neighbours are Bambara, Fula, Wolof and Mandingo, each with its own collection on this site, and the Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia collections gather each country's flag and emoji. In these countries prices are in CFA francs, ouguiya or dalasi, commonly abbreviated F CFA, UM and D (with D also used as the dalasi symbol).

The language of old Ghana

The Soninke are the people of Wagadu, the empire that Arabic writers called Ghana, which ruled the Sahel between the Senegal and Niger rivers more than a thousand years ago and grew rich on the gold trade; the ruins of Koumbi Saleh in today's Mauritania are thought to be its capital. Modern Ghana took the old empire's name at independence, though it lies far to the south. Soninke traders and Muslim scholars, among them the Wangara merchants, travelled widely across West Africa, and many family names known across the region, such as Cissé, Sylla, Doucouré, Diawara and Bathily, are of Soninke origin, written in French spelling.