The Somali alphabet: 26 letters plus ʼ, and the sounds of x, c and q

Somali is written in Latin letters, but not in English order and not with English sounds. X is a breathy h from deep in the throat, c is a sound Arabic speakers know as ʿayn, and q is made far back in the mouth. Once you know those few surprises, Somali spelling is very regular. This guide goes through the alphabet with real words checked in Wiktionary. To see where you stand, try the free Somali level test.

Updated November 15, 2026 · 5 min read

Somali at a glance

Article 5 of the Provisional Constitution of Somalia says: “The official language of the Federal Republic of Somalia is Somali (Maay and Maxaa-tiri), and Arabic is the second language.” This guide covers the Latin spelling of Somali, the one Wiktionary and 16Word use. If you also learn Arabic, you will notice that several Somali letters stand for sounds Arabic has too.

The letters, in Somali order

Wiktionary's list of Somali letters gives them in this order:

Three things stand out. First, the consonants come before the five vowels, which close the list. Second, Kh, Sh and Dh count as letters of their own, even though each is written with two characters. Third, there is no P, V or Z — you will only meet them in foreign names. The entry for ʼ explains the order: the Somali alphabet follows the order of the Arabic alphabet, which is why ʼ (called alef) comes first and b second.

The letters that surprise English speakers

Places, letter names and sounds come from Wiktionary's letter entries — x, c, dh and Q among them — and the examples from its word entries. The “rough guide” column is our own comparison for English speakers, not a phonetic description.

x and c: the two throat sounds

The hardest pair for most learners is x and c. Neither has anything to do with the English letters: x is never “ks”, and c is never “k” or “s”. Wiktionary gives saddex (three) as /ˈsad.deħ/ and magac (name) as /ˈmɑ́ɡɑ̀ʕ/. Speakers of Arabic, Persian or Pashto who know the Arabic letters ح and ع will recognise both sounds at once.

Vowels and double vowels

Somali has five vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u. When a vowel is written twice, it is held longer. You can see it in Wiktionary's transcriptions: buug (book) is /ˈbûːɡ/ with a long u, caano (milk) and hooyo (mother) show the doubled vowel as one long sound. Read aa, ee, ii, oo and uu as one long vowel, never as two separate ones.

Doubled consonants are written too: saddex (three) and toddoba (seven, /tod.do.ba/) both have a double d that you hold for a moment, as in Italian. Wiktionary also marks pitch in its transcriptions and headwords (biyó, mágac); ordinary Somali spelling does not show it, so learn it by listening.

First words to practise reading

Notice how many of these use the letters from the table above: c in cunto, dh in dhul, q in qof. Af is a nice word to know: it means both “mouth” and “language”.

If you know another script

Somali is one of several languages in our guides that use a familiar script in their own way. Azerbaijani, Romanian and Lithuanian add marks to Latin letters; Somali instead gives new jobs to letters English already has. Its neighbour in the Horn of Africa, Tigrinya, uses a completely different script — see the Tigrinya alphabet. And Kurdish shows how one language can be written both ways: compare the Sorani alphabet.

Learning Somali with 16Word

Somali is one of the newest languages in 16Word and is marked New: its word lists were prepared with machine help and are waiting for review by native speakers, and most Somali words have no recording yet. You can still practise 16 words a day with spaced repetition and a short game of Blocks between answers. Start with the Somali level test, or compare with the Arabic, Tigrinya or English tests. 16Word is free to start; see the plans for more.

Keep learning

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• The Arabic alphabet
• The Tigrinya alphabet
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