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The General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages is an orthographic system created in the late 1970s for all Cameroonian languages. 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.

Maurice Tadadjeu and Etienne Sadembouo were central to this effort.

Consonants

Cameroonian consonants

		bilabial	labio- dental	inter- dental	dental/ alveolar	post-alveolar	palatal	velar	labio- velar	glottal
Stop	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩			t ⟨t⟩			k ⟨k⟩	k͡p ⟨kp⟩	ʔ ⟨ʼ⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩			d ⟨d⟩			g ⟨g⟩	ɡ͡b ⟨gb⟩
Implosive		ɓ ⟨ɓ⟩			ɗ ⟨ɗ⟩		ƴ ⟨ƴ⟩
Affricate	voiceless		p͡f ⟨pf⟩	t͡f ⟨tf⟩	t͡s ⟨ts⟩	t͡ʃ ⟨c⟩			k͡f ⟨kf⟩
	voiced		b͡v ⟨bv⟩	d͡v ⟨dv⟩	d͡z ⟨dz⟩	d͡ʒ ⟨j⟩			g͡v ⟨gv⟩
Fricative	voiceless		f ⟨f⟩		s ⟨s⟩	ʃ ⟨sh⟩		x ⟨x⟩	x͡f ⟨xf⟩	h ⟨h⟩
	voiced		v ⟨v⟩		z ⟨z⟩	ʒ ⟨zh⟩		ɣ ⟨gh⟩	ɣ͡v ⟨hv⟩
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩			n ⟨n⟩		ɲ ⟨ny⟩	ŋ ⟨ŋ⟩	ŋ͡m ⟨ŋm⟩
Lateral	approximant				l ⟨l⟩
	voiceless fric.				ɬ ⟨sl⟩
	voiced fric.				ɮ ⟨zl⟩
Vibrant		ʙ ⟨⟩**	ⱱ ⟨vb⟩		ɾ ⟨r⟩
Approximant		w ⟨ẅ⟩					j ⟨y⟩		w ⟨w⟩

** Like ⟨ɓ⟩, but with the top hook turned to the left.

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

⟨ɨ⟩ and ⟨ʉ⟩ do not have their IPA values. ⟨ɨ⟩ is a rounded (IPA or ) and ⟨ʉ⟩ is an unrounded (IPA or ). Long vowels are written double. Nasal vowels may be written with a cedilla: a̧ etc. or with a single following nasal consonant: aŋ etc. (presumably assimilating to any following consonant), in which case would be written with a double nasal: aŋŋ etc. Harmonic vowels are written with a sub-dot, as ⟨bibị⟩ for .

Tones

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

• Pan-Nigerian alphabet
• Africa Alphabet
• African Reference Alphabet

References

1. Tadadjeu, Maurice and Etienne Sadembouo. 1979. Alphabet Générale des Langues Camerounaises. Departement des Langues Africaines et Linguistique, Université de Yaoundé, Cameroun.
2. Bird, Stephen. 2001. "Orthography and Identity in Cameroon."

External links

• General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages
• SIL Cameroon Keyboard Android app
• Résurrection des langues minoritaires

• Latin alphabets
• Writing systems of Africa
• Languages of Cameroon
• Multilingual orthographies
• Phonetic alphabets
• Writing systems introduced in the 1970s
• 1970s establishments in Cameroon