Temne Alphabet & Letters

Temne is written in the Latin script. Most of its core letters are familiar from English, but its orthography has five additional pairs: Ʌ ʌ (turned v, for /ʌ/), Ɛ ɛ (open e), Ə ə (schwa), Ɔ ɔ (open o) and Ŋ ŋ (eng). The grid includes the last four, sorted beside related letters: ɛ and ə after e, ŋ after n, ɔ after o. The fifth pair, Ʌ ʌ, is part of the Temne alphabet but missing from the grid. Other Latin letters occur mainly in names and borrowed words.

The extra letters come from the International Phonetic Alphabet, where they stand for these very sounds, and ɛ and ɔ in particular are also used to write Krio and many other languages of West Africa. That makes Temne spelling regular: each vowel letter has one sound, and writing plain e for ɛ or o for ɔ is a spelling mistake, not a style choice.

Temne is a tonal language, so the pitch of a syllable can tell words apart, but tone is normally not written in everyday Temne; linguistic descriptions mark it with accents over the vowels.

What ɛ, ə, ɔ, ŋ and th sound like

ɛ is the open e of English bed, while plain e is the closer e of Spanish mesa. ɔ is the open o of British law, while plain o is the closer o of go said without the glide. Keeping the pairs apart is what lets readers tell words that differ only in that vowel.

ə, the schwa, is the short, relaxed vowel of the a in English about. Its capital is Ə, a letter Temne shares with Azerbaijani and several other languages of Africa.

ŋ is the ng of English sing, written as one letter. Its capital Ŋ is drawn in two ways depending on the font: like a large ŋ, the form preferred in African languages, or like an N with a hook, the form used for Sami.

Temne also tells apart two kinds of t: one made with the tongue against the teeth and one made just behind them, as in English. The tooth sound is written th, two ordinary letters, which is why the name of the language is often spelled Themne. It is a t sound, not the th of English think.

How to type Temne letters on Windows, Mac and phones

The quickest way is to copy them from this page. In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 025B gives ɛ and 0190 Ɛ, 0259 gives ə and 018F Ə, 0254 gives ɔ and 0186 Ɔ, 014B gives ŋ and 014A Ŋ.

In HTML write ɛ and Ɛ for ɛ Ɛ, ə and Ə for ə Ə, ɔ and Ɔ for ɔ Ɔ, and ŋ and Ŋ for ŋ Ŋ. On a Mac there is no Option-key shortcut for them: open the Character Viewer with Control+Command+Space and search for “open e”, “schwa”, “open o” or “eng”.

On a phone, a keyboard for West African languages, such as one of the Keyman layouts, makes these letters easy to type. Whatever you use, check the look-alikes: ə (schwa, U+0259) is not ǝ (turned e, U+01DD), whose capital is the different Ǝ; ɛ is not the Greek ε, and ɔ is not the reversed ↄ. Text typed with a look-alike looks right but breaks search and sorting.

Where the Temne language is spoken

Temne is the language of the Temne people of northern and north-western Sierra Leone, spoken around Makeni, Port Loko, Kambia, Lunsar and Magburaka and widely in Freetown. CLDR estimates about 2.4 million speakers, close to the figure for Mende, the large language of the south and east, and many Temne speakers also use Krio, the language most people in the country can speak, and often English, the official language.

Temne belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo languages, in the Mel group together with the Bullom and Sherbro languages of the coast, Kissi, and the Baga languages of neighbouring Guinea. Northern Sierra Leone is also home to Limba, Loko, Kuranko, Susu and Fula speakers; for the letters of those neighbours see the Susu, Fula, Mende, Krio and English collections, and for the flag, the leone and the country's emoji see Sierra Leone.

The leone has no currency sign in Unicode: prices are written Le 100, or with the code SLE.

Temne in print

Temne has been written in Latin letters since at least 1861, when CMS missionary C. F. Schlenker published a Temne collection with a Temne–English vocabulary in London. Temne's spelling is largely phonemic, but it uses digraphs as well as single letters: th represents the dental /t̪/.

Temne history is written large in Sierra Leone: Bai Bureh, a Temne ruler, led the resistance to the British hut tax in 1898 and is remembered as a national hero; Bai is a Temne title for a chief, still part of the names of chiefdoms and their rulers.