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34-706: Through the individual languages that were its basis, the African Reference Alphabet inherits from the Africa Alphabet , and like the latter uses a number of IPA letters. The Niamey conference built on the work of a previous UNESCO-organized meeting, on harmonizing the transcriptions of African languages, that was held in Bamako , Mali, in 1966. Separate versions of the conference's report were produced in English and French. Different images of

68-446: A curl to the bottom of the tenuis-click letters: ⟨ 𝼌 𝼏 𝼍 𝼎 ⟩. Doke and Beach both wrote aspirated clicks with an h , ⟨ ʇh ʗh ʖh 𝼋h ⟩, and the glottalized nasal clicks as an oral click with a glottal stop, ⟨ ʇʔ ʗʔ ʖʔ 𝼋ʔ ⟩. Beach also wrote the affricate contour clicks with an x , ⟨ ʇx ʗx ʖx 𝼋x ⟩. Doke had run "admirable" experiments establishing

102-479: A notably delayed release of the rear articulation; for aspirated clicks these are ⟨ ᵏꞰʰ ⟩, ⟨ Ʞᵏʰ ⟩, ⟨ Ʞ͜kʰ ⟩. In the older literature, voicing is commonly marked by a wavy diacritic under the click letter, thus: ʘ᪶   ǀ᪶   ǃ᪶   ǁ᪶   ǂ᪶ . Written languages with clicks generally use an alphabet either based on the Lepsius alphabet, with multigraphs based on

136-465: A voiceless pharyngeal, a voiced glottal fricative, or even (in the Khoekhoe table) an alveolar nasal click to avoid the digraph ɖɴ. Where ⟨ ƥ ɓ ⟩ are needed for both values, ⟨ ƙ ɠ ⟩ might be chosen for the labiovelar plosives. Where dentals contrast with alveolars, ⟨ ƭ ɗ ɴ ⟩ might be chosen for the dentals. Where there are aspirated plosives but not voiced,

170-468: Is a mirror of ⟨ ʅ  ⟩; ⟨ ƴ ⟩ is written with a right-hooking tail, like the retroflex letters in the IPA; and ⟨ ɩ ⟩ has a top hook to the left, like a squashed ⟨ ʅ  ⟩. Because no language has all the consonants, the consonant letters are used for more than one potential value. They can be reassigned when there are conflicts. For instance, ɦ may be

204-638: Is a set of letters designed as the basis for Latin alphabets for the languages of Africa . It was initially developed in 1928 by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures from a combination of the English alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Development was assisted by native speakers of African languages and led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann , who served as director of

238-609: Is that, like the French proposal of 1978, it consists of only lower-case letters, making it unicase . It did not meet with acceptance at the follow-up Niamey meeting in 1984. The 32nd letter " [REDACTED] " is called linearized tilde . It is not specifically supported in Unicode (as of version 15, 2023), but can be represented by ⟨ ɴ ⟩ or ⟨ ∿ ⟩. ⟨  ƒ  ⟩ and ⟨  ʃ  ⟩ are written without ascenders (thus esh

272-562: The Lepsius alphabet or on the Latin alphabet . They may change over time or between countries. Latin letters, such as ⟨c⟩ ⟨x⟩ ⟨q⟩ ⟨ç⟩, have case forms; the pipe letters ⟨ǀ⟩ ⟨ǁ⟩ ⟨ǃ⟩ ⟨ǂ⟩ do not. By the early 19th century, the otherwise unneeded letters ⟨c⟩ ⟨x⟩ ⟨q⟩ were used as the basis for writing clicks in Zulu by British and German missions. However, for general linguistic transcription this

306-486: The pinyin solution might be chosen of using voiced letters (e.g. b) for tenuis and the voiceless letter (e.g. p) for the aspirate. Additional affricates should be written with unused letters, or with digraphs in y or w where there is morphophonemic justification. Where ⟨ θ ꝺ ⟩ are needed for both values, the lateral fricatives might be written ⟨ λ ɽ ⟩. Where velar and uvular fricatives contrast, ⟨ ɦ ɽ ⟩ might be chosen for

340-404: The IPA for the voiced velar fricative ), alveolar ⟨ ʗ 𝒬 ⟩, retroflex ⟨ ψ ⫛ ⟩, palatal ⟨ ↆ ꙟ ⟩ (or ⟨ 🡣 🡡 ⟩) and lateral ⟨ ʖ ➿︎ ⟩. A proposal to add Doke's letters to Unicode was not approved. Beach wrote on Khoekhoe and so had no need for letters for the voiced clicks; he created letters for nasal clicks by adding

374-660: The IPA, and today linguists continue to resort to digraphs or diacritics in a way that is not used for non-click consonants. (For example, no-one transcribes a alveolar nasal stop [n] as either ⟨ ⁿt ⟩ or ⟨ t̃ ⟩, analogous to the way one writes a dental nasal click as ⟨ ⁿǀ ⟩ or ⟨ ǀ̃ ⟩.) Summarized below are the common means of representing voicing, nasalization and dorsal place of articulation, from Bleek's digraphs reflecting an analysis as co-articulated consonants , to those same letters written as superscripts to function as diacritics, reflecting an analysis as unitary consonants, to

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408-559: The IPA. Click letter Various letters have been used to write the click consonants of southern Africa. The precursors of the current IPA letters, ⟨ǀ⟩ ⟨ǁ⟩ ⟨ǃ⟩ ⟨ǂ⟩, were created by Karl Richard Lepsius and used by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd , who added ⟨ ʘ ⟩. Also influential were Daniel Jones , who created the letters ⟨ʇ⟩ ⟨ʖ⟩ ⟨ʗ⟩ ⟨ʞ⟩ that were promoted by the IPA from 1921 to 1989, and were used by Clement Doke and Douglas Beach . Individual languages have had various orthographies, usually based on either

442-540: The Lepsius letters, as Lepsius himself had done for the same reason. However, linguists have since come down on the side of Doke and take the two places of articulation to be inherent in the nature of clicks, because both are required to create a click: the 'influx' cannot exist without the 'efflux', so a symbol for an influx has only theoretical meaning just as a symbol like ⟨ D ⟩ for 'alveolar consonant' does not indicate any actual consonant. Regardless, separate letters like Doke's and Beach's were never provided by

476-413: The [clicks] is the peculiarity of stopping in part, and even drawing back the breath, which appears to be most easily expressed by a simple bar 𝗅 . If we connect with this our common marks for the cerebral [i.e. retroflex: the sub-dot] or the palatal [i.e. the acute accent], a peculiar notation is wanted only for the lateral , which is the strongest sound. We propose to express it by two bars 𝗅𝗅 . As

510-572: The alphabet were used in the two versions, and there are a number of differences between the two. The English version was a set of 57 letters, given in both upper-case and lower-case forms. Eight of these are formed from common Latin letters with the addition of an underline mark . Some (the uppercase letters alpha, eth ( [REDACTED] ), esh, and both lower- and upper-case [REDACTED] , [REDACTED] ) cannot be accurately represented in Unicode (as of version 15, 2023). Others do not correspond to

544-400: The base for all click consonants of the same place of articulation (called the 'influx'), and added a second letter or diacritic for the manner of articulation (called the 'efflux'), treating them as two distinct sounds (the click proper and its accompaniment), whereas Doke used a separate letter for each tenuis , voiced , and nasal click, treating each as a distinct consonant, following

578-425: The combining diacritics for voicing and nasalization. Because the last option cannot indicate the posterior place of articulation, it does not distinguish velar from uvular clicks. The letter ⟨ Ʞ ⟩ is used here as a wildcard for any click letter. A distinction may be made between ⟨ ᵏꞰ ⟩ for an inaudible rear articulation, ⟨ Ʞᵏ ⟩ for an audible one, and ⟨ Ʞ͜k ⟩ for

612-465: The curl on the left leg, the lateral has a curl on both legs, and the palatal and retroflex are ⟨ŋ⟩ ⟨ɲ⟩ with a curl on their free leg: ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩. The voiced-click letters are more individuated, a couple were simply inverted versions of the tenuis-click letters. The tenuis–voiced pairs were dental ⟨ ʇ ɣ ⟩ (the letter ⟨ ɣ ⟩ had not yet been added to

646-491: The design of the IPA. The African reference alphabet proposal has apparently never been used, while the Linguasphere and Lingvarium transcriptions are typewriter substitutions specific to those institutions. Besides the difference in letter shape (variations on a pipe for Lepsius, modifications of Latin letters for Jones), there was a conceptual difference between them and Doke or Beach: Lepsius used one letter as

680-515: The equivalent letters ⟨ʇ⟩ ⟨ʖ⟩ ⟨ʗ⟩ ⟨ʞ⟩ in response to a 1914 request to fill this gap in the IPA, and these were published in 1921 (see history of the International Phonetic Alphabet ). In 1875, if not earlier, Wilhelm Bleek used the letter ⟨ ʘ ⟩ for bilabial clicks . It was also used 1911 by Lucy Lloyd . Clement Doke expanded on Jones' letters in 1923. Based on an empirically informed conception of

714-466: The example of the Latin alphabet, where the voiced and nasal occlusives also treated as distinct consonants ( p b m, t d n, c j ñ, k g ŋ ). Doke's nasal-click letters were based on the letter ⟨ n ⟩, continuing the pattern of the pulmonic nasal consonants ⟨ m ɱ n ɲ ɳ ŋ ɴ ⟩. For example, the letter for the dental nasal click is ⟨ ȵ ⟩; the alveolar is similar but with

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748-421: The first to report retroflex clicks . Douglas Beach would publish a somewhat similar system in his phonetic description of Khoekhoe . Because Khoekhoe had no voiced clicks, he only created new letters for the four nasal clicks. Again, he didn't use Jones' "velar" click letter, but created one of his own, ⟨ 𝼋 ⟩, based on the Lepsius letter ⟨ ǂ ⟩ but graphically modified to better fit

782-415: The letters in the English version were listed – omitting the hooktop-z – and two further apostrophe-like letters were included (for ʔ and ʕ); although as small as punctuation marks, they are placed lower than punctuation marks would be. Five of the letters were written with a subscript dot instead of a subscript dash as in the English version (ḍ ḥ ṣ ṭ and ẓ). (These represent Arabic-style emphatic consonants ;

816-465: The manners of articulation (the 'effluxes'), which are used with both the Lepsius and Zulu orthographies. One uses g for voicing and x for affricate clicks; the other uses d for voicing and g for affricate clicks. Both use n for nasal clicks, but these letters may come either before or after the base letter. For simplicity, these will be illustrated across various orthographies using the lateral clicks only. The following systems are presented in

850-603: The nature of click consonants as unitary sounds. Nonetheless, Bleek in his highly influential work on Bushman languages rejected Doke's orthography on theoretical grounds, arguing that each of Doke's letters stood for two sounds, "a combination of the implosive sound with the sound made by the expulsion of the breath" (that is, influx plus efflux), and that it was impossible to write the clicks themselves in Doke's orthography, as "we cannot call [the implosive sounds] either unvoiced, voiced, or nasal." Bleek therefore used digraphs based on

884-400: The nature of click consonants, he analyzed voiced and nasal clicks as separate consonants, much as voiced plosives and nasals are considered separate consonants from voiceless plosives among the pulmonic consonants, and so added letters for voiced and nasal clicks. (Jones' palatal click letter was not used, however. Jones had called it "velar", and Doke called palatal clicks "alveolar".) Doke was

918-575: The organization from 1926 to 1939. The aim of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, later renamed the International African Institute (IAI), was to enable people to write for practical and scientific purposes in all African languages without the need of diacritics . The Africa Alphabet influenced the development of orthographies of many African languages, serving "as the basis for

952-552: The other underlined letters (c̠, q̠ and x̠) remain underlined; they represent click consonants .) Diacritical marks and punctuation are not shown. The French and English sets are otherwise identical. Notes: A proposed revision of the alphabet was made in 1982 by Michael Mann and David Dalby, who had attended the Niamey conference. It has 60 letters. Digraphs are retained only for vowel length and geminate consonants, and even there they suggest replacements. A key feature of this proposal

986-520: The pipe letters for clicks, or on the Zulu alphabet, with multigraphs based on c q x for clicks. In the latter case, there have been several conventions for the palatal clicks. Some languages have had more than one orthography over the years. For example, Khoekhoe has had at least the following, using dental clicks as an example: Historical roman orthographies have been based on the following sets of letters: There are two principal conventions for writing

1020-693: The same order: bilabial, dental ('c'), lateral ('x'), alveolar ('q'), palatal ('v') and retroflex ('‼'), with gaps for missing letters. The Zulu click letters of the Norwegian mission: Lepsius's click letters (lower case; upper case are taller): Sundevall's click letters (lower case): Sundevall's click letters (upper case): Jones's IPA letters: Doke's letters for voiceless clicks: Doke's letters for voiced clicks: Doke's letters for nasal clicks: Beach's et al. letters for voiceless clicks: Beach's letters for nasal clicks: Post-Kiel IPA (short, e.g. 1989): Post-Kiel IPA (long, e.g. 1993): Essential to

1054-741: The transcription" of about 60 by one count. Discussion of how to harmonize these with other systems led to several largely abortive proposals such as the African Reference Alphabet and the World Orthography . The Africa Alphabet was built from the consonant letters of the English alphabet and the vowel letters, and any additional consonants, of the IPA. Capital forms of IPA letters were invented as necessary. Thus J and Y are pronounced [ d͡ʒ ] and [ j ] as in English, while Ɔ, Ɛ and Ŋ are pronounced [ ɔ ] , [ ɛ ] and [ ŋ ] as in

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1088-443: The upper- and lower-case identities in Unicode, or (e.g. Ʒ) require character variants in the font. This version also listed eight diacritical marks ( acute accent (´), grave accent (`), circumflex (ˆ), caron (ˇ), macron (¯), tilde (˜), trema (¨), and a superscript dot (˙) and nine punctuation marks (? ! ( ) « » , ; .). In the French version, the letters were hand-printed in lower case only. Only 56 of

1122-547: The uvulars. Where ⟨ ʋ ⟩ is needed for both values, ⟨ ω ⟩ might be chosen for the approximant. The click letters are combined with ɴ (before or after) for nasal clicks, followed by g for voiced, and followed by h for aspirated. Remaining diacritics should be replaced by linearized equivalents. For the tone diacritics are proposed baseline-aligned ⟨´ ` ⌟ ⌝⟩ (not supported by Unicode). Africa Alphabet The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet )

1156-566: Was confusing, as each of these letters had other uses. There were various ad hoc attempts to create letters—often iconic symbols—for click consonants, with the most successful being those of the Standard Alphabet by Lepsius , which were based on a single symbol (pipe, double pipe, pipe-acute, pipe-sub-dot) and from which the modern Khoekhoe letters ⟨ǀ⟩ ⟨ǁ⟩ ⟨ǃ⟩ ⟨ǂ⟩ descend. During the First World War, Daniel Jones created

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