Reading Kịrịkẹ: dots, tones and the level sign

Look up só and you will find "to go". Look up sò and you get "sky; fate or fortune". sọ́, with a dot underneath, means "too; also". Same letters, three words. The marks on Kịrịkẹ spelling are not decoration: they carry meaning.

Nine vowels

Levi Sika counted nine vowels in Kịrịkẹ: five he called wide and four narrow. In writing, the difference is the dot: a, e, i, o, u on one side, and ẹ, ị, ọ, ụ on the other. Words tend to keep to one set, which is why so many Okrika words have dots on every vowel, as in Kị̀rị̀kẹ̀ itself.

Two consonants take the dot as well, ḅ and ḍ. They are the implosive b and d heard in ḅùrú (yam) and ḍírí (book), made by drawing air in rather than pushing it out.

Three tones, and two rare ones

Sika marked three tones. The high tone takes an acute accent, as in ágá, the cane used for baskets, furniture and fish traps. The low tone takes a grave accent. And a third, which he called the level or down-step sign, is a flat bar over the vowel, as in ḅárā (hand). He admitted it was the hardest to hear and could only be learned "by careful listening".

Falling and rising tones are rarer. A circumflex marks the falling tone in short commands such as ḅô (come), and a háček marks the rising tone. Sika also counted doubled vowels, as in faa and maa, as a form of stress in their own right.

You do not need to type any of it

Most phone keyboards make the dot under a letter hard to type, so Kịrịkẹnị’s search ignores marks completely. Type "so" and you will see só, sò, sọ́ and every other match, ranked so that exact matches come first. Type in English and the search runs the other way, from English to Okrika.