<story><title>Two brothers invented an alphabet for their native language, Fulfulde</title><url>https://news.microsoft.com/stories/people/adlam.html?ocid=lock</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ibudiallo</author><text>As a Fulani, when I was growing up there weren&amp;#x27;t any official alphabet. Some people wrote in Arabic, other&amp;#x27;s in the latin letters using french phonetics and agreed upon combinations for those new sounds. (ie Bhe, dhe, etc.) I only know Fulani orally.&lt;p&gt;But around 2002, if I remember correctly, Guinean students from the University of Azhar in Egypt, started working on a new alphabet. They agreed on using latin letters for familiar sounds, since most of Fulanis speak french anyway. They added new letters for those particularly Fulani sounds.&lt;p&gt;I remember being there in a small college bedroom where they were all gathered around the computer. It had a Pentium III and they were excited about a new Pentium 4 machine that someone had donated but they didn&amp;#x27;t get the chance to install it yet. I don&amp;#x27;t remember if the two brothers were there since those names are extremely common for Fulani (yes, my name is Ibrahima too).&lt;p&gt;I was there to get a hair cut, and along the way they told me the computer had issues. All I did was go to windows Registry, and delete the files that automatically started at boot.&lt;p&gt;The script in this article is new to me, never saw it before. I read books in the one they made in Egypt, since it&amp;#x27;s easy to pick up. In fact, I think when you take an official test in Fulani, it is written in the script from Egypt.&lt;p&gt;Either way, I&amp;#x27;m excited for this and hopefully I&amp;#x27;ll get to learn it quick enough to teach my own children.</text></comment>
<story><title>Two brothers invented an alphabet for their native language, Fulfulde</title><url>https://news.microsoft.com/stories/people/adlam.html?ocid=lock</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dghughes</author><text>This is great, I love languages and writing systems. My own heritage is Irish so I can see how language and culture are linked so strongly to writing the words to speak the language of that culture.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s amazing how dismissive we can be too. A friend of mine who is Mi&amp;#x27;kmaq (pronounced mig-maw) a First Nations&amp;#x2F;Native American was showing me ancient glyph symbols of his language. I had been telling him about languages I liked and that&amp;#x27;s why he showed me the Mi&amp;#x27;kmaq alphabet&amp;#x2F;syllabary for their writing system. They aren&amp;#x27;t used Latin letters are used but it shows how even me as a fan of languages assumed First Nations peoples in the Americas did not develop writing systems. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.omniglot.com&amp;#x2F;writing&amp;#x2F;mikmaq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.omniglot.com&amp;#x2F;writing&amp;#x2F;mikmaq.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can spend hours looking at Omniglot.com I strongly recommend it.</text></comment>