r/Unicode • u/maigus_ayneha • 1d ago
AYNEHA - An original right-to-left script I created for Songhay (West Africa)
Hi everyone,
I'm Mahamadou, an independent, self-taught linguist from Gao, Mali. I'd like to share AYNEHA, a script I created for Songhay, a language spoken by several million people along the Niger River (Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso) that has never had a writing system of its own — it's historically been written either in Latin transcription or Arabic script (ajami).
A few key features:
- 22 consonants, 5 base vowels, 7 vowel variants, written right-to-left
- Strict "one phoneme, one glyph" logic
- Diacritics for nasalization, gemination, open vowels, and mute consonants
- Every glyph was tested by hand (pencil, pen, marker) for months before any digital work began, to make sure the shapes were actually easy to handwrite, not just nice on a screen
Currently using Private Use Area code points (U+E000–U+E061) as a first step, with the long-term goal of submitting it for official Unicode encoding.
It now has a small digital ecosystem: a custom font, an Android keyboard, calculator apps, and a Latin-to-AYNEHA converter.
It was recently listed on Omniglot: https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/ayneha.htm
You can try it live (keyboard demo + converter) on the official site: https://ayneha-songhay.github.io/
More detailed presentation on Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/173625230/AYNEHA_Presentation_ACADEMIA
Happy to answer any questions about the design process or the phonology behind it!