Language/Zarma/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation

Zarma (Zarmaciine) is a member of the Songhay branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. It is spoken by about 2.2 million people in mainly in Niger,

where it is the most widely-spoken indigenous language, and also in Mali, Benin, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

This languages is also known as Djerma, Adzerma, Zabarma, Zarbarma, Zarma...

Alphabet

Songhai, of which Zarma is a dialect, was and is written with several writing systems, including the Adjami Arabic alphabet and several variants of the Latin alphabet. Many manuscripts were written in the Songhai language using the Arabic alphabet. Today Zarma is officially written with the Latin alphabet.

Zarma uses the following letters of the Latin (Roman) alphabet:

Capital letters	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L
Lower case letters	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l
Prononciation	/a/	/b/	/dʒ/	/d/	/e/	/f/	/g/	/h/	/i/	/dʒ/	/k/	/l/
Capital letters	M	N	Ɲ	Ŋ	O	P	R	S	U	W	Y	Z
Lower case letters	m	n	ɲ	ŋ	o	p	r	s	u	w	y	z
Prononciation	/m/	/n/	/ɲ/	/ŋ/	/o/	/p/	/r/	/s/	/u/	/w/	/j/	/z/

Vowels

There are ten vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and their nasalized counterparts which are denoted by either a tilde or a following 'n' or 'ŋ'.

• Doubled vowels are long

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k
	voiced	b	d	ɟ ⟨j⟩	g
Fricative	voiceless	f	s			h
	voiced		z
Approximant		w	l	j ⟨y⟩
Flap			ɾ ⟨r⟩
Trill			r ⟨rr⟩

The combinations /ɡe/, /ɡi/, /ke/ and /ki/ usually have some palatal quality to them and may even be interchangeable with /ɟe/, /ɟi/, /ce/ and /ci/ in the speech of many people.

All consonants may be short, and all consonants except /c/, /h/, /f/ and /z/ may be long. (In some dialects, long /f/ exists in the word goffo.)