Bassa_Vah_alphabet

Bassa Vah alphabet

Bassa Vah alphabet

Alphabet for the Bassa language of Liberia

Bassa Vah, also known as simply Vah ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabetic script for writing the Bassa language of Liberia.[2] As an old system nearing extinction in the 1900s, it was rediscovered among Bassa in Brazil and the West Indies, then revived in Liberia, by Thomas Flo Lewis.[3] Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959.[1] It is not used today and has been classified as a failed script.[4]

Quick Facts Bassa Vah 𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱, Script type ...
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Letters

Vah is written from left to right. It is a true alphabet, with 23 consonant letters, seven vowels and five tone diacritics. A fullstop/period is represented with π–«΅.

𖫧
IPA: [a]
a
π–«’
IPA: [b]
b
π–«”
IPA: [Ι“]/[mᡇ]
Ι“
π–«Ÿ
IPA: [c]
c
π–«—
IPA: [d]
d
𖫦
IPA: [Ι–]/[ΙΊ]
Ι–
π–«•
IPA: [dΚ²]/[Ι²]
dy
π–««
IPA: [e]
e
𖫬
IPA: [Ι›]
Ι›
π–«“
IPA: [f]
f
π–«–
IPA: [g]
g
𖫝
IPA: [Ι‘Ν‘b]
gb
π–«”
IPA: [Ε‹Ν‘m]
gm
π–«€
IPA: [h]
h
π–« 
IPA: [hΚ·]
hw
π–«­
IPA: [i]
i
π–«™
IPA: [ɟ]
j
π–«‘
IPA: [k]
k
π–«˜
IPA: [kΝ‘p]
kp
𖫐
IPA: [n]
n
𖫨
IPA: [Ι”]
Ι”
π–«©
IPA: [o]
o
π–«₯
IPA: [p]
p
π–«’
IPA: [s]
s
π–«‘
IPA: [t]
t
π–«ͺ
IPA: [u]
u
π–«£
IPA: [v]
v
π–«›
IPA: [w]
w
π–«š
IPA: [xΚ·]/[Δ§Κ·]
xw
π–«œ
IPA: [z]
z

Tones

Vah uses five diacritical marks to denote tonality of its vowels. It distinguishes five tones: high, low, mid, mid-rising, and falling.

Tone diacritics and examples with βŸ¨π–«§βŸ©
high
π–«°β—Œ
IPA: Λ¦
low
π–«±β—Œ
IPA: Λ¨
mid
π–«²β—Œ
IPA: Λ§
mid-rising
π–«³β—Œ
IPA: Λ¨Λ§
falling
π–«΄β—Œ
IPA: Λ₯Λ©
𖫰𖫧
𖫧𖫱
𖫲𖫧
𖫳𖫧
𖫧𖫴

Unicode

Main article: Bassa Vah (Unicode block)

Bassa Vah was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

The Unicode block for Bassa Vah is U+16AD0–U+16AFF:

Bassa Vah[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
 0123456789ABCDEF
U+16ADx 𖫐 π–«‘ π–«’ π–«“ π–«” π–«• π–«– π–«— π–«˜ π–«™ π–«š π–«› π–«œ 𖫝 π–«ž π–«Ÿ
U+16AEx π–«  π–«‘ π–«’ π–«£ π–«€ π–«₯ 𖫦 𖫧 𖫨 π–«© π–«ͺ π–«« 𖫬 π–«­
U+16AFx π–«° π–«± π–«² π–«³ π–«΄ π–«΅
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

References

  1. [1]
    Everson, Michael; Riley, Charles (2010). "Final proposal for encoding the Bassa Vah script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF).
  2. [2]
    Coulmas, Florian, ed. (1999). "Bassa alphabet". The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. p. 39. doi:10.1002/9781118932667.ch2. ISBN 9780631214816.
  3. [3]
    "History of the Bassa Script". Bassa Vah Association. Archived from the original on 2007-02-22.
  4. [4]
    Unseth, Peter (2011). "Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization". In Joshua A. Fishman; Ofelia GarcΓ­a (eds.). Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 23–32. ISBN 9780199837991.
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