Adlam Alphabet Table
| Letter | Name | Romanized | Capital |
|---|---|---|---|
| 𞤢 | ALIF | a | 𞤀 |
| 𞤣 | DAALI | d | 𞤁 |
| 𞤤 | LAAM | l | 𞤂 |
| 𞤥 | MIIM | m | 𞤃 |
| 𞤦 | BA | b | 𞤄 |
| 𞤧 | SINNYIIYHE | s | 𞤅 |
| 𞤨 | PE | p | 𞤆 |
| 𞤩 | BHE | ɓ (bh) | 𞤇 |
| 𞤪 | RA | r | 𞤈 |
| 𞤫 | E | e | 𞤉 |
| 𞤬 | FA | f | 𞤊 |
| 𞤭 | I | i | 𞤋 |
| 𞤮 | O | o | 𞤌 |
| 𞤯 | DHA | ɗ (dh) | 𞤍 |
| 𞤰 | YHE | ƴ (yh) | 𞤎 |
| 𞤱 | WAW | w | 𞤏 |
| 𞤲 | NUN | n (syllable-final na) | 𞤐 |
| 𞤳 | KAF | k | 𞤑 |
| 𞤴 | YA | y | 𞤒 |
| 𞤵 | U | u | 𞤓 |
| 𞤶 | JIIM | j | 𞤔 |
| 𞤷 | CHI | c | 𞤕 |
| 𞤸 | HA | h | 𞤖 |
| 𞤹 | QAAF | ɠ (q) | 𞤗 |
| 𞤺 | GA | g | 𞤘 |
| 𞤻 | NYA | ñ (ny) | 𞤙 |
| 𞤼 | TU | t | 𞤚 |
| 𞤽 | NHA | ŋ (nh) | 𞤛 |
| 𞤾 | VA | v | 𞤜 |
| 𞤿 | KHA | x (kh) | 𞤝 |
| 𞥀 | GBE | ɡb | 𞤞 |
| 𞥁 | ZAL | z | 𞤟 |
| 𞥂 | KPO | kp | 𞤠 |
| 𞥃 | SHA | sh | 𞤡 |
Adlam is the alphabet of Pular - the language of the Fulani people of the Sahel - and its origin story is unlike any other entry in this family: it was invented in the late 1980s by two brothers, teenagers <b>Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry</b> of Guinea, who set out to give their language a script of its own and finished a working alphabet as adolescents. The name is short for the first four letters, <i>a, da, la, m</i> - the same acrophonic trick that gave <i>alphabet</i> its name. Adlam runs <b>right to left</b>, its 34 letters map one-to-one onto Pular sounds (including implosive <i>bh</i> and <i>dh</i>, pre-nasalized <i>gb</i> and <i>kp</i>), and it spread from a family project into night schools across Fulani communities in West Africa, with a famous emphasis on teaching girls to write.
Two design choices make this chart different from every other alphabet table on the site. First, Adlam is the only living African script with a <b>capital and small letter distinction</b>, mirroring the Latin convention so schoolbooks could treat it like any world alphabet - Unicode encoded the capitals in 9.0 (2016) and the small letters in 14.0 (2021), and this table lists the small forms with their capital partners beside them. Second, the letters are true alphabet letters, not syllables: unlike the abugida neighbours <a href="https://tooldune.com/hanunoo-alphabet-table/">Hanunóo</a> or <a href="https://tooldune.com/baybayin-alphabet-table/">Baybayin</a>, a consonant letter is just a consonant - the vowel is a separate letter, which is why Pular spelling looks so compact.
How to use
- Read the table top to bottom in Unicode order: 34 small letters, each with its Unicode name, its standard romanization, and its capital partner. Five letters are pure vowels - <i>a, e, i, o, u</i> - so every other row is a bare consonant; the romanized column doubles as your pronunciation key, and the hooked forms (<i>ɓ, ɗ, ƴ, ɠ</i>) are the implosive consonants that give Pular its sound. The table is verified letter-by-letter against the Unicode standard, and because the small letters sit at a fixed offset from the capitals, every pair differs by exactly one code point.
- To write, go right to left, letter by letter, vowels included - no diacritics needed for the basic system. Letters connect in style rather than in cursive obligation, and the shapes were designed for easy handwriting and cheap printing: the brothers wanted a script a family could teach at a kitchen table. Practice with your own name first, then a Fulani word or two - <i>Pular</i> itself, or <i>Adlam</i>. The digits (U+1E950, a full 0-9 set) and the nasalization mark (U+1E94B) round out the block once the letters are comfortable.
Frequently asked questions
Who invented the Adlam alphabet?
Two brothers from Guinea, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, invented it in the late 1980s as teenagers - Ibrahima about 14, Abdoulaye about 10 - to give Pular, the language of the Fulani people, a script matched to its sounds instead of the improvised French-based spelling then in use. Their family tested it, ran informal night classes, and the script spread across Fulani communities in Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria and beyond; Microsoft and Google both ship Adlam fonts today, an unusually fast path from family project to operating-system support.
Why does Adlam have capital and small letters?
Because its designers wanted Adlam to work like the world’s schoolbook alphabets: capitals open sentences and mark names, small letters carry the text, so Fulani children could learn one writing convention for every subject. It is the only living African script with this distinction built in from the start. The Unicode Standard encoded the capital set first (Unicode 9.0, 2016) and added the small set a five-year wait later (Unicode 14.0, 2021), which is why older fonts sometimes show boxes where small letters should be.
What language does Adlam write?
Pular (also called Fulani or Fulfulde), the language of some 50 million Fulani people across the Sahel from Senegal to Cameroon. The alphabet was engineered for its consonant inventory - the implosives written <i>bh</i> and <i>dh</i>, the pre-nasalized clusters <i>gb</i> and <i>kp</i> (each a single letter), and the velar nasal <i>nh</i> - which is exactly why borrowed French spellings had been such a poor fit. Related dialects of the language are written in Adlam wherever the diaspora has taken it.
How is Adlam different from N’Ko?
They are two generations of the same West African idea. <a href="https://tooldune.com/nko-alphabet-table/">N’Ko</a> was created in 1949 in Guinea (by Solomana Kante, for the Mande languages); Adlam followed in the late 1980s for Pular. N’Ko has a single letter case and marks tones; Adlam added capitals and a true five-vowel alphabet. Both run right to left, both were built by single authors or families, and both went from local night schools to Unicode encoding - a pattern this site’s <a href="https://tooldune.com/cherokee-syllabary-table/">Cherokee syllabary</a> and <a href="https://tooldune.com/hanunoo-alphabet-table/">Hanunóo</a> charts show repeating on other continents.
What are the Adlam digits and marks?
The block carries its own digits 0-9 at U+1E950, so numbers can be written without switching scripts, plus one combining mark: the nasalization sign (U+1E94B), which turns a vowel nasal the way French does with an <i>n</i>. There are no tone marks and no vowel diacritics - the five vowel letters do all the work. That small inventory is deliberate: everything in the block is taught in the first weeks of an Adlam literacy class.