Adlam Pular 𞤀𞤣𞤤𞤢𞤥 𞤆𞤵𞤤𞤢𞤪
"Adlam" written in Adlam script
Script type	Alphabet
Creator	Ibrahima Barry and Abdoulaye Barry
Period	1989–present[1]
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	Fula
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Adlm(166), ​Adlam
Unicode
Unicode alias	Adlam
Unicode range	U+1E900–U+1E95F

TheAdlam script is a script used to writeFulani.^[2] The nameAdlam is an acronym derived from the first four letters of the alphabet (A, D, L, M), standing forAlkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol (𞤀𞤤𞤳𞤵𞤤𞤫 𞤁𞤢𞤲𞤣𞤢𞤴𞤯𞤫 𞤂𞤫𞤻𞤮𞤤 𞤃𞤵𞤤𞤵𞤺𞤮𞤤^[3]), which means "the alphabet that protects the peoples from vanishing". It is one of many indigenous scripts developed for specific languages in West Africa.^[4]

Adlam is supported in Google'sAndroid andChrome operating systems. There are alsoAndroid apps to sendSMS in Adlam and to learn the alphabet.^[5] On computers runningMicrosoft Windows, the Adlam script received native support beginning withWindows 10 version 1903, which was released in May 2019. OnmacOS, the Adlam script received support beginning withVentura in 2022.

While they were teenagers in the late 1980s, brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry devised the alphabetic script to transcribe the Fulani language.^[3][6] One method they used involved them closing their eyes and drawing lines. After looking at their drawn shapes, they would pick which ones would look the most to them like a good glyph for a letter, and associate it with whatever sound they felt it would represent. Another method involved is thinking of a sound, imagining the look of a glyph for that sound, and drawing said glyph.^[7] After several years of development it began to be widely adopted among Fulani communities, and is currently taught not only regionally inGuinea,Nigeria, andLiberia but even as far as Europe and North America.^[1] In 2019, the character shapes were refined after practical usage.^[8]

Adlam has both upper and lower cases.

They are written from right to left.^[9]

The letters are found either joined (akin toArabic) or separate. The joined form is commonly used in acursive manner; however, separate orblock forms are also used as primarily for educational content.^[11]

Adlam has a number ofdiacritics. The 'consonant' modifier is used to derive additional consonants, mostly from Arabic, similar to e.g. s > š in Latin script.

Usage of the consonant modifier:

Usage of the dot to represent sounds borrowed from Arabic:

Use of the dot with native letters:

Unlike the Arabic script, Adlam digits go in the same direction (right to left) as letters, as in theN'Ko script.

Adlam punctuation is likeSpanish in that there are initial and final forms of the question mark and exclamation mark, which are placed before and after the questioned or exclaimed clause or phrase.The final forms are taken from the Arabic script.^{[12][better source needed]}The shape of the initial marks changed in 2019 as part of the efforts for Unicode standardization.^[8]

The hyphen is used for word breaks, and there are both parentheses and double parentheses.

The Adlam alphabet was added to theUnicode Standard in June 2016 with the release of version 9.0. The Unicode block for Adlam is U+1E900–U+1E95F:

• Aysha Sow (2021).Adlam Alphabet Learning Guide in ten lessons(PDF). Winden Jangen.

• Winden Jangen, an organisation promoting Adlam
• The Adlam Story – How Alphabet Changes CultureArchived 2018-08-21 at theWayback Machine; Randall M. Hasson
• Adlam at Omniglot, with a video pronouncing the basic letters
• Adlam virtual keyboard
• Latin-Adlam Transliterator
• The ADLaM Alphabet for Our People - Talks at Google session guested by Barry brothers explaining the origins of their script
• The brothers who created an alphabet - story from the BBC World Service

• Fula language
• Alphabets
• Writing systems of Africa
• 1989 introductions
• Right-to-left writing systems
• Constructed scripts

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
• Articles containing Fula-language text
• All articles lacking reliable references
• Articles lacking reliable references from January 2023
• Webarchive template wayback links