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.
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. These texts were then distributed as gifts across the Manding-speaking parts of West Africa. The script received its first dedicated typewriter from Eastern Europe as Guinea had ties to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
This introduction of the script led to a movement promoting N'Ko literacy among Mandé speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. N'Ko literacy was thus instrumental in shaping Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and strengthened Manding identity in wider West Africa.
On June 27, 2024, the N'Ko literary standard was added to Google Translate.
As of 2005, it was used mainly in Guinea and the Ivory Coast (respectively by Maninka and Dyula speakers), with an active user community in Mali (by Bambara speakers). Publications include a translation of the Quran, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers. Though taught mostly informally through N'Ko literacy promotion associations, N'Ko has also been introduced more recently into formal education through private primary schools in Upper Guinea. It has been classed as the most successful of the West African scripts.
N'Ko literature generally uses a literary language register, termed kangbe (literally, 'clear language'), that is seen as a potential compromise dialect across Mandé languages. For example, the word for 'name' in Bamanan is tɔgɔ and in Maninka it is tɔɔ. N'Ko has only one written word for 'name', but individuals read and pronounce the word in their own language. This literary register is thus intended as a koiné language blending elements of the principal Manding languages, which are mutually intelligible, but has a very strong Maninka influence.
There has also been documented use of N'Ko, with additional diacritics, for traditional religious publications in the Yoruba and Fon languages of Benin and southwestern Nigeria.
The N'Ko script is written from right to left, with letters being connected to one another.
N'Ko uses seven diacritical marks to denote tonality and vowel length. Together with plain vowels, N'Ko distinguishes four tones: high, low, ascending, and descending; and two vowel lengths: long and short. Unmarked signs designate short, descending vowels. One dot below a vowel marks that vowel as nasal.
N'Ko also provides a way of representing non-native sounds through the modification of its letters with diacritics. These letters are used in transliterated names and loanwords.
Two dots above a vowel, resembling a diaeresis or umlaut mark, represent a foreign vowel: u-two-dots for the French /y/ sound, or e-two-dots for the French /ə/.
Diacritics are also placed above some consonant letters to cover sounds not found in Mandé, such as gb-dot for /ɡ/; gb-line for /ɣ/; gb-two-dots for /k͡p/; f-dot for /v/; rr-dot for /ʁ/; etc.
N'Ko numerals use positional notation. Unlike Western and Eastern Arabic numerals, digits decrease in significance from right to left.
⸜...⸝ bracket paraphrased text, approximately equivalent to italics in Latin script. N'Ko "uses a set of paired punctuation, U+2E1C ⸜ LEFT LOW PARAPHRASE BRACKET and U+2E1D ⸝ RIGHT LOW PARAPHRASE BRACKET, to indicate indirect quotations."
⟨߷⟩ paragraph mark; marks the end of a section of text
⟨ߴ⟩ apostrophe (elision of a vowel carrying a high tone)