The Garay alphabet was designed in 1961, as a transcription system "[marrying] African sociolinguistic characteristics" according to its inventor, Assane Faye. This alphabet has 25 consonants and 14 vowels.[1] It is used in particular for the writing of the Wolof language, spoken mostly in Senegal, although that language is more often written in the Latin alphabet and to a lesser extent in the Arabic (Wolofal) alphabet. It is written from right to left, and distinguishes letter case.
Garay | |
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Script type | alphabet
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Creator | Assane Faye |
Created | 1961 |
Direction | Right to left |
Languages | Wolof |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Gara (164), Garay |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Garay |
U+10D40–U+10D8F | |
Letters
editConsonants
editThe consonants are written as standalone letters and are not joined as in Arabic.
There is a mark above some letters to show pre-nasalization. The letter labeled alif is used like its counterpart in Arabic, coming before an initial vowel. Extra to the standard Wolof set is /ħ/, available for Arabic loan words. Lacking is /q/, but /k/ may suffice for that. Also lacking is /nk/, but that may easily be formed with a mark above, like /mb/ etc.[2]
In Garay, uppercase letters are distinguished from lowercase letters by a swash added to one side or the other of the letter. Each sentence begins with a capital letter. Personal names are likewise capitalized.[3]
Nasals | Prenasalized plosives | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
IPA | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | ɲ ⟨ñ⟩ | ŋ ⟨ŋ⟩ | mb ⟨mb⟩ | nd ⟨nd⟩ | ɲɟ ⟨nj⟩ | ŋɡ ⟨ng⟩ |
Lowercase | (modern form) (old form) |
|||||||
Uppercase | (modern form) (old form) |
|||||||
Voiced plosives | Voiceless plosives | |||||||
IPA | b ⟨b⟩ | d ⟨d⟩ | ɟ ⟨j⟩ | ɡ ⟨g⟩ | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | c ⟨c⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ |
Lowercase | (modern form) (old form) | |||||||
Uppercase | (modern form) (old form) | |||||||
Fricatives | Liquids and semivowels | |||||||
IPA | f ⟨f⟩ | s ⟨s⟩ | x~χ ⟨x⟩ | ħ ⟨h⟩ | r ⟨r⟩ | w ⟨w⟩ | l ⟨l⟩ | j ⟨y⟩ |
Lowercase | ||||||||
Uppercase | ||||||||
Null consonant (alif): carrier of initial vowels | ||||||||
Lowercase | ||||||||
Uppercase |
Vowels
edita ⟨a⟩ | i ⟨i⟩ | ɛ ⟨e⟩ | ɔ ⟨o⟩ |
ə ⟨ë⟩ | ih~ii ⟨ih⟩ | e ⟨é⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ |
Numbers
editUnicode
editThe Garay alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September 2024 with the release of version 16.0.
The Unicode block for Garay is U+10D40–U+10D8F:
Garay[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+10D4x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
U+10D5x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
U+10D6x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |||
U+10D7x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
U+10D8x | | | | | | | | | ||||||||
Notes |
References
edit- ^ The Garay alphabet can contribute to the rebirth of Africa, according to its inventor , Birane Hady Cissé, on fr.allafrica.com (April 21, 2009, accessed November 7, 2018).
- ^ Garay script for Wolof, Ian James, March 2012
- ^ Garay Alphabet: a Wolof Script Archived 2020-01-18 at the Wayback Machine, 6 May 2019
Bibliography
edit- Rovenchak, Andrij; Faye, Abdou Souleye; Riley, Charles L. (February 19, 2022). Consideration of the encoding of Garay with updated user feedback (revised) (PDF). This is the final revision of the proposal, with significant changes, that was finally accepted for encoding in the UCS by proposers, the UTC, the ISO working groups, the SEI, and other consulted parties. It added a few other characters (notably for distinguishing modern and old variants of base consonant letters Ka and Na, for the transcription of words borrowed from Arabic, for the Garay hyphen, and for two mathematical symbols) and removed some unnecessary consonants (using additional combining characters for nasalized and geminated consonants), keeping space for three additional consonants for the transcription of French words. This proposal was also addressing issues reported on two significant contributions to clarify the encoding model and to solve ambiguities (notably between nasalized consonants and some vowels written as digraphs):
- Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken; Pournader, Roozbeh; Constable, Peter (January 22, 2022). Recommendations to UTC #170 January 2022 on Script Proposals (PDF).
- Rovenchak, Andrij; Riley, Charles (May 9, 2011). Recommendations to UTC #155 April-May 2018 on Script Proposals (PDF).
- Everson, Michael (April 26, 2012). Preliminary proposal for encoding the Garay script in the SMP of the UCS (PDF).
- Pandey, Anshuman (May 9, 2011). Introducing the Wolof Alphabet of Assane Faye (PDF).
External links
edit- Discover Garay[permanent dead link], Movement of Teachers of African Languages in Senegal (MELAS).
- James, Ian (March 2012). "Garay script of Wolof". SkyKnowledge.com.
- "Wolof (Wollof)". Omniglot.