The Somali Latin alphabet is largely phonemic, with consonants having a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel. However, the distinction between tense and lax vowels is not represented; before standardization a cedilla had been used. Diphthongs are transcribed with y or w as the second element (ay, aw, ey, oy and ow); long diphthongs are written with the first vowel doubled. The letter c had originally been superscripted ᶜ on manual typewriters, as an approximation of ⟨ʿ⟩,[4] but came to be written inline when the alphabet was standardized.
As there is no central regulation of the language, there is some variation in orthography, the endings -ay and -ey being particularly interchangeable.
The Somali Latin alphabet, which follows an Arabic-based order, is seen in the following table. The letters' names (with their Arabic equivalents) are spelt out in the following table.
The Somali alphabet lacks equivalents of the Arabic letters thāʼ (ث), dhal (ذ), zāy (ز), ṣād (ص), ḍād (ض), ṭāʾ (ط), ẓāʾ (ظ), and ghayn (غ). Wadaad's Script does have letters for these, which are used for the writing of Arabic loanwords.
The following elements of the Somali alphabet either are not IPA symbols in their lower case versions, or else have values divergent from IPA symbols:
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