Susu Alphabet

Susu, also spelled Soso and in French Soussou, is a Mande language of West Africa, a close relative of Yalunka and a more distant cousin of Maninka and Bambara. It is the language of Guinea's Atlantic coast and of the capital, Conakry, where people of every background use it in the market, the taxi and the street. Speakers call their language Sosoxui, a name that already shows one of its typical letters, x.

Unicode's CLDR has no alphabet for Susu yet, so the letters on this page follow the Latin spelling used in Guinean literacy books and in the Susu Bible: A B D Nd E Ɛ F G Gb H I K X L M N Ɲ O Ɔ P R S T U V W Y in capitals and a b d nd e ɛ f g gb h i k x l m n ɲ o ɔ p r s t u v w y in small letters. The added letters sit next to the letter they are sorted after: ɛ after e, ɲ after n, ɔ after o.

Some letters are as telling by their absence. The core alphabet has no c, j, q or z; it includes v. You will meet c, j, q and z in French names and loanwords, but not in ordinary Susu words. Two letters that look plain do unusual work. X x is not the ks of English box but a throaty sound made at the back of the mouth, like the ch of Scottish loch or a soft Spanish j. And gb is written with two letters but said as one consonant, with the lips and the back of the tongue closing at the same moment, as in many West African languages.

What Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and Ɲ ɲ do in Susu

The three added letters use IPA-derived symbols and keep their phonetic values. Ɛ ɛ is an open e, close to the vowel of English bed, while plain e is closer, like French é. Ɔ ɔ is an open o, close to the vowel of British law, while plain o is the o of go. Because Susu tells words apart by these vowels, writing e for ɛ or o for ɔ can turn one word into another.

Ɲ ɲ, n with a left hook, is the ny sound of Spanish ñ or French gn in montagne. In quick messages many people write ny instead of ɲ, and plain e and o instead of ɛ and ɔ, because those letters are easy to type; the proper letters are what literacy books and printed Susu use.

Susu is a tonal language: a high or low pitch can separate words that are otherwise spelled the same. Everyday spelling does not mark tone, so the alphabet has no accented vowels; linguists who need to show tone add acute and grave accents in their own transcriptions.

How to type Susu letters: ɛ, ɔ and ɲ

The quickest way is to copy them from the grid. On Windows, Word and WordPad turn a Unicode code into the letter when you press Alt+X right after it: 025B then Alt+X gives ɛ, 0190 gives Ɛ, 0254 gives ɔ, 0186 gives Ɔ, 0272 gives ɲ, 019D gives Ɲ. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input keyboard in System Settings and select it as your input source, then hold Option and type the corresponding four-digit code.

In HTML, the added Susu letters are easiest as numbers: ɛ for ɛ, ɔ for ɔ and ɲ for ɲ. For regular writing on a computer or phone, a keyboard layout for West African Latin letters, such as the free ones made with Keyman, puts all three a key or two away.

Watch for look-alikes: ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, ɔ is not a turned c, and ɲ is not ɳ, the n with a hook on the right. On screen they can look almost the same, but a search engine or spell checker treats them as different characters, so a word typed with the wrong one will not be found.

Where the Susu language is spoken in Guinea

CLDR estimates that 1.5 million literate, functional people in Guinea use Susu, and many more Guineans use it as a second language, above all in Conakry. Its home is Lower Guinea, the coastal region the French called Guinée maritime, with towns such as Dubréka, Coyah, Forécariah, Kindia and Boké; across the border it is also spoken in the north-west of Sierra Leone.

French is Guinea's official language, so Susu texts in Guinea often follow French punctuation, including the angle quotation marks « ». The Guinean franc has no currency sign of its own and is written GNF or FG. For the flag, the money and the emoji of the country see the Guinea collection. Guinea's other big languages have pages too, Fula (Pular) and Mandingo (Maninka), with the N’Ko script made for the Manding languages.