Yor\`{u}b\'{a} in Unicode: An Overview of a Problem
TL;DR
This paper identifies Unicode's NFC normalization stability policy as the structural constraint that prevents a straightforward fix, arguing for direct intervention of the Consortium in solving the active problem, and proposing a formal encoding request for the four core Yor\`ub\'a characters as the most durable path to resolution.
Abstract
There is a recurrent problem in the writing of Yor\`ub\'a on the internet and on the computer that has proven intractable over the years. The language, along with other African languages that depend on diacritics for disambiguation, requires a small set of precomposed characters that Unicode does not encode. This has forced writers and digital systems to rely on combining character sequences that behave inconsistently across platforms, corrupt under font substitution, and fail in search. This paper documents that failure across a range of real world contexts, from published books to web platforms to mobile keyboards, using personal and empirical evidence. It identifies Unicode's NFC normalization stability policy as the structural constraint that prevents a straightforward fix, arguing for direct intervention of the Consortium in solving the active problem, proposing a formal encoding request for the four core Yor\`ub\'a characters as the most durable path to resolution.
