N'Ko script
alphabetic script initially created by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a transcription system for Manding languages in Western Africa, now designed and developed to become a pan-African script covering their phonology
N'Ko (ߒߞߏ), also spelled Nko, is an alphabetic script devised by Solomana Kanté in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa. The term Nko, which means I say in all Manding languages, is also used for the Manding literary standard written in the N'Ko script.
The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script, notably its direction (right-to-left) and the letters that are connected at the base. Unlike Arabic, it is obligatory to mark both tone and vowels. N'Ko tones are marked as diacritics.
History
Kanté created N'Ko in response to beliefs that no indigenous African writing system existed, as well as to provide a better way to write Manding languages, which had for centuries been written predominantly in Ajami script, which was not perfectly suited to the tones unique to Mandé and common to other West African languages. An anecdote popular with N'Ko proponents is that Kanté was particularly challenged to create the distinct system when, while in Bouake, he found a book by Kamel Mrowa who dismissed African languages as "like those of the birds, impossible to transcribe" despite said Ajami history. Kanté then devised N'Ko while he was in Bingerville, Côte d'Ivoire, and later brought it to his native Kankan, Guinea.
N'Ko began to be used in many educational books, and the script is believed to have been finalized on April 14, 1949 – a date now celebrated as N'Ko Alphabet Day. Kanté initially used the system to transcribe religious, scientific, and philosophical literature, and even a dictionary.
“N'Ko script” enters the record as alphabetic script initially created by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a transcription system for Manding languages in Western Africa, now designed and developed to become a pan-African script covering their phonology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what N'Ko, script and alphabetic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “N'Ko script” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.