Boko alphabet


Boko is a Latin-script alphabet used to write the Hausa language. The first boko was devised by Europeans in the early 19th century, and developed in the early 20th century by the British and French colonial authorities. It was made the official Hausa alphabet in 1930. Since the 1950s boko has been the main alphabet for Hausa. Arabic script is now only used in Islamic schools and for Islamic literature. Since the 1980s, Nigerian boko has been based on the Pan-Nigerian alphabet.
The word boko also refers to non-Islamic education or secularism. The word is commonly stated to be a borrowing from English book. In 2013, leading Hausa expert Paul Newman published "The Etymology of Hausa boko", in which he presents the view that boko is in fact a native word meaning "sham, fraud", Western learning and writing being seen as deceitful in comparison to traditional Koranic scholarship.
LetterA aB bƁ ɓC cD dƊ ɗE eF fG gH hI iJ jK kƘ ƙL lM mN nO oR rS sSh shT tTs tsU uW wY yZ zʼ
IPA

There are some differences in boko used in Niger and Nigeria due to different pronunciations in the French and English languages. The letter is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written.
Tone, vowel length, and the distinction between and are not marked in writing. So, for example, "from" and "battle" are both written daga.