N’ko

NKo is a Unicode block containing characters for the Manding languages of West Africa, including Bamanan, Jula, Maninka, Mandinka, and a common literary language, Kangbe, also called N'Ko.

N'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949, as a writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means I say in all Manding languages.

The script has a few similarities to the Arabic script, notably its direction (right-to-left) and the connected letters. It obligatorily marks both tone and vowels.