The Guinea alphabet made use of several
digraphs (including either "h" or "y" as the second letter), some of which represent consonants not present in European languages, and two
diacritics (
grave accent and
diaeresis) for open vowels. This system was widely used within the country but differed from the orthographies of neighboring countries of
West Africa, as developed in the wake of the 1966 Bamako expert meeting on harmonizing orthographies of the
cross-border languages of the region. In 1989, following a meeting on reform of the alphabet in 1988, it was decided to adopt an orthography similar to the
African reference alphabet used elsewhere in the region. A summary table of the digraphs and diacritics of the old alphabet, and their extended Latin equivalents in the new system, follows: : == References ==