As a Fulani, when I was growing up there weren't any official alphabet. Some people wrote in Arabic, other's in the latin letters using french phonetics and agreed upon combinations for those new sounds. (ie Bhe, dhe, etc.) I only know Fulani orally.

But around 2002, if I remember correctly, Guinean students from the University of Azhar in Egypt, started working on a new alphabet. They agreed on using latin letters for familiar sounds, since most of Fulanis speak french anyway. They added new letters for those particularly Fulani sounds.

I remember being there in a small college bedroom where they were all gathered around the computer. It had a Pentium III and they were excited about a new Pentium 4 machine that someone had donated but they didn't get the chance to install it yet. I don't remember if the two brothers were there since those names are extremely common for Fulani (yes, my name is Ibrahima too).

I was there to get a hair cut, and along the way they told me the computer had issues. All I did was go to windows Registry, and delete the files that automatically started at boot.

The script in this article is new to me, never saw it before. I read books in the one they made in Egypt, since it's easy to pick up. In fact, I think when you take an official test in Fulani, it is written in the script from Egypt.

Either way, I'm excited for this and hopefully I'll get to learn it quick enough to teach my own children.