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Somali Alphabet (Latin)

The letters and characters of Somali written in the Latin script, in order — every standard character with its name and codepoint, the additional and punctuation sets, and exactly how many fonts include them. About 18,630,626 people read or write it across 6 countries.

134,368Fonts cover the standard set
18Standard characters
18,630,626People
6Countries

Standard characters

The minimal set of characters required for Somali — the language's alphabet, in its traditional order. Tap a character to copy it; each name opens the full character page. The Fonts column counts how many fonts include each letter, in the same order as the letters and codepoints; an accented form under a letter gets its own codepoint and count line beneath it.

LetterNameCodepointsFontsper letter, in order
Bb B U+0042 · U+0062 135,982 / 135,083
Cc C U+0043 · U+0063 135,993 / 135,072
Dd D U+0044 · U+0064 136,007 / 135,110
Ff F U+0046 · U+0066 135,955 / 135,041
Gg G U+0047 · U+0067 135,944 / 135,030
Hh H U+0048 · U+0068 135,937 / 135,003
Jj J U+004A · U+006A 135,779 / 134,898
Kk K U+004B · U+006B 135,820 / 134,904
Ll L U+004C · U+006C 135,840 / 134,937
Mm M U+004D · U+006D 135,809 / 134,871
Nn N U+004E · U+006E 135,770 / 134,851
Qq Q U+0051 · U+0071 135,653 / 134,746
Rr R U+0052 · U+0072 135,744 / 134,845
Ss S U+0053 · U+0073 135,721 / 134,797
Tt T U+0054 · U+0074 135,769 / 134,800
Ww W U+0057 · U+0077 135,522 / 134,664
Xx X U+0058 · U+0078 135,478 / 134,585
Yy Y U+0059 · U+0079 135,463 / 134,648

Additional Characters

Used for foreign words, names and technical terms, and older forms of the language.

Punctuation characters

The marks used to separate sentences and to clarify meaning.

-U+002D‐U+2010‑U+2011–U+2013—U+2014,U+002C;U+003B:U+003A!U+0021?U+003F.U+002E…U+2026'U+0027‘U+2018’U+2019"U+0022“U+201C”U+201D(U+0028)U+0029[U+005B]U+005D§U+00A7@U+0040*U+002A/U+002F&U+0026#U+0023†U+2020‡U+2021′U+2032″U+2033

Where Somali (Latin) is read

Countries shaded by the share of their population that reads or writes Somali in the Latin script. The map is zoomed to the region where at least 1% of a country's people read it; neighbouring countries are shown unshaded for context.

50% or more of the country 10–50% 1–10% under 1% not listed for this language

Estimated readers — share of each country's population (CLDR).

CountryEstimated readersShare of population
Somalia 10,153,494 78%
Ethiopia 7,113,000 6%
Kenya 757,203 1.3%
Djibouti 407,939 41%
United Kingdom 136,918 0.2%
Canada 62,072 0.16%

Somali (Latin) — facts

Font coverage 134,368 of 137,179 fonts include every one of the 18 standard characters; 134,155 include the standard and additional sets together. Counts are exact for the snapshot of 21 October 2026.
Script Latin
Unicode blocks Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, General Punctuation
People About 18,630,626 people read or write Somali in the Latin script — mostly in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, United Kingdom.

Data: Unicode CLDR exemplar characters (CLDR 48.2.0) and CLDR territory population data. Font counts: snapshot of 21 October 2026.