The General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages is an orthographic system created in the late 1970s for all Cameroonian languages.Bird, Stephen (2001), Orthography and Identity in Cameroon 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 Not to be confused with , representing a voiced bilabial implosive 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 Uncommon consonants that do not make a phonemic contrast within a language with similar but more common consonants are not provided for. These include . However, the alphabet provides a stock of digraphs for unattested sounds that may be discovered among unwritten languages in the future. +Cameroonian consonants Bilabiallabio-dentalinter-dentaldental/alveolarpre-palatalpalatalvelarlabio-velarglottalStopvoicelessp t kkpʼ voicedb d ggbImplosive/glottalizedɓ ɗ ƴ Affricatevoiceless pftftsc kfvoiced bvdvdzj gvFricativevoiceless f ssh hy xxfhvoiced v zzh gh hvNasalm n ny ŋŋmLateralapproximant lv l sl voiced fric. zl Vibrantbr vb r Glideẅ 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 Vowels that appear phonetically in Cameroonian languages, but do not make phonemic distinctions, are not provided for. These include . +Cameroonian vowels FrontunroundedfrontroundedcentralunroundedbackunroundedbackroundedHighi ɨ ʉ uMid-highe ø oMid-lowɛ ə ɔLow a α
The descriptions of and are inconsistent, with being either IPA or . The identifications above are how they are described with actual examples. Additional IPA vowels are available if needed.
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 for .
Tones Tone is written as in the IPA, with the addition of a vertical mark for mid-low tone: etc. (the opposite of the value of the vertical mark elsewhere). Where rising and falling tones only occur on long vowels, they are decomposed: etc. The high tone mark is used for contrastive stress in languages that do not have tone.
See also Pan-Nigerian alphabet Africa Alphabet African Reference Alphabet
References
External links General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages SIL Cameroon Keyboard Android app Résurrection des langues minoritaires