Garay Capital Letter Fa

It is Garay’s capital letter for the f sound.

Assane Faye created Garay in Senegal to write Wolof. It first appeared in print in January 1961, shortly after Senegal became independent from France. Faye designed a simpler alphabet that people familiar with Arabic script could learn, with the potential to serve African languages beyond Wolof. In Senegal, Wolof is written in Latin, and some readers also use Wolofal, an Arabic-based way to write the language.

Garay’s relationship to Arabic is influence, not descent: it runs right to left and was designed with Arabic-script readers in mind, but its letters are written separately rather than joined. The direction and familiar design cues connect the scripts; their characters are not interchangeable.

When do you use capital letters in Garay?

They mark sentence beginnings and proper nouns.

That casing does not change the f sound. If 𐵠 appears in a Garay word someone sent you, read it as the capital form of the f letter.

As of 2024, documented Garay use included informal lessons, women’s groups and adult literacy for Mandinka as well as Wolof. Faye wrote textbooks, folktales and maps, and a Qur’an with Wolof translations between its lines; a Facebook page and YouTube lessons also carried instruction online. The user community remained small.