Phonetic characters don't come in capital and lowercase forms, so when the hooked letters were adopted into the Africa Alphabet, someone decided to make capitals to go along with them.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: Don Osborn <dzo@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 1:07:03 PM
Subject: Origin of Ɓ?

Does anyone have any info on the story behind the upper case hooked B,
D, K, and Y consonants (Ɓ, Ɗ, Ƙ, and Ƴ)?

At the time of publication of the Africa Alphabet (2nd ed., 1930), a
Cyrillic-like Ƃ was used. When was the current uppercase form
developed and linked to the lowercase form?

TIA for any info. Don

Ref:
http://www.bisharat .net/Documents/ poal30.htm (Zulu sample text)
Thanks to Denis Moyogo Jacquerye for raising a question re the form
used in this document.