General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages

The General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages is an orthographic system created in the late 1970s for all Cameroonian languages.[1][2] Consonant and vowel letters are not to contain diacritics, though is a temporary exception. The alphabet is not used sufficiently for the one unique letter, a bilabial trill, to have been added to Unicode.

Maurice Tadadjeu and Etienne Sadembouo were central to this effort.

Consonants

Cameroonian consonants
Bilabiallabio-
dental
inter-
dental
dental/
alveolar
pre-
palatal
palatalvelarlabio-
velar
glottal
Stopvoiceless ptkkpʼ
voiced bdggb
Implosive ɓɗƴ
Affricatevoiceless pftftsckf
voiced bvdvdzjgv
Fricativevoiceless fsshxxfh
voiced vzzhghhv
Nasal mnnyŋŋm
Lateralapproximant l
voiceless fric. sl
voiced fric. zl
Vibrant ʙ**vbr
Glide yw

** Like ɓ, but with the top hook turned to the left.

Aspirated consonants are written ph, th, kh etc. Palatalized and labialized consonants are py, ty, ky and pw, tw, kw etc. Retroflex consonants are written either Cr or with a cedilla: tr, sr or ţ, ş, etc. Prenasalized consonants are mb, nd, ŋg etc. Preglottalized consonants are ʼb, ʼd, ʼm etc. Geminant consonants are written double.

Vowels

Cameroonian vowels
Front
unrounded
front/central
rounded
central/back
unrounded
back
rounded
High iɨ [sic]ʉ [sic]u
Mid-high eøɤo
Mid-low ɛœəɔ
Low æa/ɑα

Long vowels are written double. Nasal vowels may be written with a cedilla: etc. or with a single following nasal consonant: etc. (presumably assimilating to any following consonant), in which case VN would be written with a double nasal: aŋŋ etc. Harmonic vowels are written with a sub-dot, as bibị for [bib-y].

Tones

Tone is written as in the IPA, with the addition of a vertical mark for mid-low tone: á ā a̍ à, â ǎ etc. Where rising and falling tones only occur on long vowels, they are decomposed: áà, àá etc. The high tone mark is used for contrastive stress in languages that do not have tone.

See also

References

  1. Tadadjeu, Maurice and Etienne Sadembouo. 1979. Alphabet Générale des Langues Camerounaises. Departement des Langues Africaines et Linguistique, Université de Yaoundé, Cameroun.
  2. Bird, Stephen. 2001. "Orthography and Identity in Cameroon."
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.