Writing
Since the 1970s Bambara has mostly been written in the Latin script, using some additional phonetic characters. The vowels are a, e, ɛ (formerly è), i, o, ɔ (formerly ò), u; accents can be used to indicate tonality. The former digraph ny is now written ɲ or ñ (Senegal). The ambiguous digraph "ng" represented both the sound of English "finger" and the of "singer". The 1966 Bamako spelling conventions render the latter sound as "ŋ".
The N'Ko (ߒ'ߞߏ) alphabet is a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa; N’Ko means 'I say' in all Mande languages. Kante created N’Ko in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a "cultureless people" since prior to this time there had been no indigenous African writing system for his language. N'ko came first into use in Kankan, Guinea as a Maninka alphabet and disseminated from there into other Mande-speaking parts of West Africa. N'ko and the Arabic script are still in use for Bambara, although the Latin script is much more common.
Read more about this topic: Bambara Language
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