Adamawa Fulfulde is mostly written in a modified
Arabic script, in the tradition of
Ajami script, that it shares with many other languages such as
Hausa language, and many other languages in Sub-Sahara Africa. Writing Fulfulde with Arabic script has a long tradition and old manuscripts are found in all of West Africa. While traditionally, the
Arabic alphabet was used in its unmodified original 28-character state, and thus no distinction was made between similar sounds, such as [b]/[mb]/[ɓ], [d]/[nd], or [p]/[f], today, despite a lack of governmental endorsement in many instances, these letters and writing conventions have been standardized and agreed upon.
Latin alphabet is also used for writing of Adamawa. The usage of Latin is a lot more recent, only coming to existence with the arrival of European Christian. Still, in Cameroon, Arabic alphabet remains more popular for writing of Adamawa Fulfulde than Latin.
Adamawa Fulfulde Ajami alphabet The Adamawa Fulfulde Ajami alphabet is the result of many decades of efforts to standardize, starting from the 1960s. By the 1990s, the orthography was well established. In 1998, at the JCMWA/MICCAO conference in
Ngaoundéré,
Cameroon, over 100 representatives from 14 West African countries agreed that this orthography would be a good standard for writing the Fulfulde language with Arabic script. The alphabet consists of 33 basic letters, 28 plus
hamaza from Arabic, and 4 are new letters created for use in Fulfulde. 10 of the Arabic letters are only used for writing Arabic loanwords, and have no use for writing indigenous Fulfulde words.
Prenasalized consonants In Adamawa Fulfulde, there are 4 prenasalized consonants.
Prenasalized consonants are written as a
digraph (combination of two consonants). The first letter of the digraph representing a prenasalized consonant cannot take any diacritic, including zero-vowel diacritic
sukun ''.
Vowels and diacritics Like other languages that have historically been written within what's known as the
Ajami tradition, there is a full relaince on
diacritics for writing vowels. All vowels are written with diacritics. In Arabic there are only three diacritics, which represent [a]
, [u] [i] , and [i] ''. The general tradition is that when there are vowels that don't exist in Arabic, new diacritics are created. In Adamawa Fulfulde these include the Quranic
imāla for vowel [e], and a special diacritic for vowel [o]. Unlike Arabic orthography, or other Arabic-derived scripts, in Ajami tradition, all diacritics are written. Even letters that don't have any vowels, are written with a
zero-vowel/sukun '' diacritic. Only in the following instances are letters written without a diacritic: :Vowels are lengthened by combining the diacritic with a follow-up letter, just as is the tradition in Arabic. These follow-up letters are written without a diacritic. :Letters
miimi and nuunu
can be part of a digraph representing prenasalized consonants. In these instances, these two letters are written without a diacritic.
Adamawa Fulfulde Latin alphabet ==Sample text==