1978 proposals
Separate versions of the conference's report were produced in English and French. Different images of the alphabet were used in the two versions, and there are a number of differences between the two.
The English version was a set of 57 letters, given in both upper-case and lower-case forms. Eight of these are formed from common Latin letters with the addition of an underline. Some (the uppercase letters alpha, eth (
), esh, and both lower- and upper-case 
, 
) cannot be accurately represented in Unicode (as of version 15, 2023). Others do not correspond to the upper- and lower-case identities in Unicode, or (e.g. Ʒ, Ʃ) require character variants in the font.
This version also listed eight diacritical marks (acute accent (´), grave accent (`), circumflex (ˆ), caron (ˇ), macron (¯), tilde (˜), trema (¨), and a superscript dot (˙) and nine punctuation marks (? ! ( ) « » , ; .).
The letters presented in the Annex 1 of the 1978 Niamey meeting report are slightly different from the ones presented on page 34 (page 32 in the French version) which omitted the hooktop-z but included two apostrophe-like letters (for ʔ and ʕ). Five of the letters were written with a subscript dot instead of an underline as in the English version (namely ḍ ḥ ṣ ṭ and ẓ). The French and English sets are otherwise identical.
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| Aa | Ɑɑ | Bb | Ɓɓ | Cc | C̠c̠ | Dd | Ḍḍ | Ɖɖ | Ɗɗ |  ð | |||||||||
| Ee | Ɛɛ | Ǝǝ | Ff | Ғƒ | Gg | Ɣɣ | Hh | Ḥḥ | Ii | Ɪɪ | |||||||||
| Jj | Kk | Ƙƙ | Ll | Mm | Nn | Ŋŋ | Oo | Ɔɔ | Pp | ||||||||||
| Q̠q̠ | Rr | Ɍɍ | Ss | Ṣṣ | Ʃʃ | Tt | Ṭṭ | Ƭƭ | Ŧʈ | ϴө | Uu | ||||||||
| Ʊʊ | Vv | Ʋʋ | Ww | Xx | X̠x̠ | Yy | Ƴƴ | Zz | Ẓẓ | | Ʃʒ | ||||||||
Notes:
- ⟨Ɑ ɑ⟩ is graphically closer to lowercase Greek alpha ⟨
⟩ rather than Latin script a ⟨
⟩. In Unicode, Latin alpha and script a are not considered to be separate characters. - The uppercase ⟨I i⟩ does not have crossbars ⟨
⟩, while the uppercase ⟨Ɪ ɪ⟩ does ⟨
⟩. - The penultimate z with tophook ⟨
⟩ is not encoded in Unicode. - ⟨c̠, q̠, x̠⟩ represent click consonants (/ǀ, ǃ, ǁ/ respectively), but the line under is optional, and usually not used.
- The pharyngeal ⟨ḥ⟩ and pharyngealized ⟨ḍ, ṣ, ṭ, ẓ⟩ are presented with lines below as ⟨h̠⟩ and ⟨d̠, s̱, t̠, z̠⟩ in the Annex 1 but with dots in the other parts of the 1978 Niamey meeting report (both in the French and English versions). These represent Arabic-style emphatic consonants.
- ⟨c, j⟩ represent either palatal stops /c, ɟ/ or postalveolar affricates /tʃ, dʒ/.
- ⟨ʈ, ɖ⟩ are retroflex stops, as they are in the IPA.
- ⟨ƒ, ʋ⟩ represent bilabial fricatives /ɸ, β/.
- ⟨ө⟩ is a dental fricative /θ/, not a vowel.
- Although digraphs using ⟨h⟩ are normally used to represent aspirated consonants, in languages in which those are absent, the digraphs can be used instead of ⟨ʒ, ʃ, ө, ɣ⟩ etc.
- Digraphs with ⟨m, n⟩ are used for prenasalized consonants.
- Digraphs with ⟨w, y⟩ are used for labialized and palatalized consonants.
- ⟨kp, gb⟩ are used for labial–velar stops, as they are in the IPA.
- ⟨hl, dl⟩ are used for lateral fricatives /ɬ, ɮ/.
- ⟨ɓ, ɗ⟩ are used for implosives, and ⟨ƭ, ƙ⟩ for either ejectives or voiceless implosives. ⟨ƴ⟩ is used for a glottalized or laryngealized approximant /ˀj/.
- Nasal vowels are written either with a nasal consonant after the vowel, or with a tilde above it.
- Tone is indicated using the acute accent, grave accent, caron, macron, and circumflex.
- A trema is used for centralized vowels, and vowel length is indicated by doubling the vowel (e.g. ⟨aa⟩ for /aː/).
- Segmentation should be done according to each language's own phonology and morphology.
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