General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages
The General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages is an orthographic system created in the late 1970s for all Cameroonian languages.[2][3] Consonant and vowel letters are not to contain diacritics, though ⟨ẅ⟩ is a temporary exception. The alphabet is not used sufficiently for the one unique letter, a bilabial trill, to have been added to Unicode; in any case, that letter has now been replaced.
Maurice Tadadjeu and Etienne Sadembouo were central to this effort.
Consonants
[edit]Uncommon consonants that do not make a phonemic contrast within a language with similar but more common consonants are not provided for. These include /ɸ/, /β/, /θ/, /ð/. However, the alphabet provides a stock of digraphs for unknown sounds that may be discovered among unwritten languages in the future.[1]
| Bilabial | labio- dental |
inter- dental |
dental/ alveolar |
pre- palatal |
palatal | velar | labio- velar |
glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | kp | ʼ [ʔ] | ||||
| voiced | b | d | g | gb | ||||||
| Implosive/glottalized | ɓ | ɗ | ƴ [ʔʲ] | |||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | pf | tf | ts | c [tʃ] | kf | ||||
| voiced | bv | dv | dz | j [dʒ] | gv | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | sh [ʃ] | hy | x | xf | h | ||
| voiced | v | z | zh [ʒ] | gh [ɣ] | hv | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ny [ɲ] | ŋ | ŋm | |||||
| Lateral | approximant | lv | l | |||||||
| voiceless fric. | sl [ɬ] | |||||||||
| voiced fric. | zl [ɮ] | |||||||||
| Vibrant | br [ʙ] | vb [ⱱ] | r | |||||||
| Glide | ẅ | y | w | |||||||
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
[edit]Vowels that appear phonetically in Cameroonian languages, but do not make phonemic distinctions, are not provided for. These include [ɪ], [ʊ], [y].[1]
| Front unrounded |
front rounded |
central unrounded |
back unrounded |
back rounded | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | ʉ [ɯ] | u | |
| Mid-high | e | ø | o | ||
| Mid-low | ɛ | ə | ɔ | ||
| Low | a | α |
The descriptions of ⟨ɨ⟩ and ⟨ʉ⟩ are inconsistent, with ⟨ɨ⟩ being either IPA [ɨ] or [ʉ]. The identifications above are how they are described with actual examples.[2]: 27 Additional IPA vowels are available if needed.[2]: 13
Long vowels are written double. Nasal vowels are written with a cedilla: a̧ etc., rather than with a tilde to leave room for tone marking, or with a single following nasal consonant: aŋ 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].[clarification needed]
Tones
[edit]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. (the opposite of the value of the vertical mark elsewhere). 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
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Etienne Sadembouo. 2023. Alphabet Générale des Langues Camerounaises : 1979-2019, quel accueil et quelle perspective après 40 ans d’adoption ?
- ^ a b c d e Tadadjeu, Maurice and Etienne Sadembouo. 1979. Alphabet Générale des Langues Camerounaises. Departement des Langues Africaines et Linguistique, Université de Yaoundé, Cameroun.
- ^ Bird, Stephen. 2001. "Orthography and Identity in Cameroon."