The Fula language (Fula: Fulfulde, Pulaar, or Pular) is written primarily in the Latin script, but in some areas and contexts is still written in an older Arabic script called the Ajami script or in the recently invented Adlam script.
History Around the 10th century, Islam was introduced to the West African Sahel and became the religion of scholars and merchants in cities which traded extensively with North African traders. At the same time as Islam arrived came the Qur'an and the Arabic script, which was studied by West African scholars who learned to read, write and speak Arabic. Along with this, many students going through Koranic education would write down notes in their native languages, usually in the margins of books. It is known that some Fulani scholars were among the students studying in cities like Timbuktu and Gao, hence it is possible that Fulfulde would have been written down starting in the 16th-17th century. As Islam arrived to the Fulani lands in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Fula jihads created multiple Islamic states in West Africa which converted the population and created a class of literate scholars who would debate, speak, write and read in Fulani. The states of the Imamate of Futa Jallon from 1725 and the Sokoto Caliphate from 1804 were both epicentres of West African scholarship, with poetry, science, history, philosophy, and religion debated in Fulfulde. This established Ajami, a modified script that was able to write Fulfulde, as the original and more traditional form of writing Fulfulde across all Fula populations. With the arrival of Christian missionaries and soon after the invasion of European powers, mostly the French and English, came the introduction of the Latin script to Fula-speaking regions of West and Central Africa. Various missionaries, colonial administrators, and scholarly researchers devised various ways of writing Fulfulde with Latin to ease the efforts of European colonisation. There were several sounds that were unfamiliar to European languages, like the implosive b and d, the ejective y, the velar n (in the initial position), prenasalised consonants, and long vowels. Currently, Latin alphabets are the default for Fulfulde writing, with most nations in West Africa having standardised Latin alphabets that accommodate Fulfulde and/or other languages, for official use and instruction. Various Fula writers such as Amadou Bampate Ba and Alfa Ibrahim Sow wrote and published in Latin alphabets, and is used across a range of publications from national level literacy materials, periodicals and linguistic studies and textbooks. Major influences on current forms of writing Fula came from decisions made by colonial administrators in Northern Nigeria and the Africa Alphabet. Major UNESCO-sponsored conferences on harmonising Latin-based African orthographies were held in Bamako in 1966 and Niamey in 1978, which included standards for writing Fula. Nevertheless, orthographies differ for the language and its variants in different regions, determined by country level.
Latin Alphabets
Standard Orthography There are variations depending on the country's policies or the dialect of Fula used. There are some general rules that were established by UNESCO from earlier conventions:
Phonemic orthography, meaning that every letter represents one phoneme/sound without silent letters However prenasalised stops are written as two letters, like in ndiyam (water) But nasalised vowels are not written but inferred from context Double consonants represent geminate consonants, like in sappu (to wash) and sapu (to fold) Double vowels represent the vowel length, like in laamɗo (person)
Alphabet Comparison Below is a table showing the few differences between the different orthographies of Fula alphabets.
Pulaar Fuuta Tooro (Senegal, The Gambia, Mauritania) Pulaar Fuuta Tooro is the Fula dialect spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Southern Mauritania. Its Latin alphabet has been standardised by Senegalese government decrees, the latest of which issued in 2005. It differs from other alphabets in that it includes diphthongs and prenasalisation in the official list, while other alphabets treat it as an orthographic rule instead of a letter.
Pular Fuuta Jalon (Guinea) Pular Fuuta Jaloo is the Fula dialect spoken in Guinea. Following independence, the government of Guinea adopted transcription rules for all the languages of Guinea based on the characters and diacritic combinations available on French typewriters from that period. The Guinean languages alphabet was used officially for Guinean indigenous languages until 1989. A meeting for the reform of the alphabet was established in 1988, and it was decided to adopt an orthography similar to the African reference alphabet which was used elswhere in West Africa. In the case of Pular, this change brought the official orthography in harmony with those used in other countries.
The pre-1989 alphabet was based on the simple Latin alphabet with digraphs for the sounds particular to Pular as opposed to unique letters. This alphabet is still used by some Pular speakers (in part because it can be typed using commercial keyboards).
Maasina Fulfulde (Mali, Burkina Faso) The dominant Fula accent in Mali is referred to as Maasina Fulfulde. Its Latin alphabet was standardized in 1967, and it consists of 32 letters.
Nigerian Fulfulde and Adamawa Fulfulde (Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Burkina Faso)
A common Latin alphabet is used in Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso is used for writing of Fulfulde dialects in this region. The dialect spoken in Cameroon and Western Nigeria is Adamawa Fulfulde. The dialect spoken in much of Northern and Central Nigeria (Hausaland) is Nigerian Fulfulde. The dialects spoken in Northern Hausaland in Niger are Eastern (Lettugal) and Western (Gorgal) Niger Fulfulde. The Latin alphabet consists of 39 letters, including digraphs and apostrophe.
Bagirimi Fulfulde (Chad, Central African Republic) The dominant Fulfulde dialect in Chad and Central African Republic, close to Adamawa Fulfulde, is Bagirmi Fulfulde. In 2009, the Chadian government standardized both Latin and Ajami scripts for all indigenous languages of the country, including Bagirmi Fulfulde, in what is known as Chadian National Alphabet.
Ajami alphabet
In recent decades, albeit at a slower pace than Fula Latin orthography, there has been conferences, seminars, and attempts by linguists and literaturists in various countries to standardize the Arabic (Ajami) script.
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