Vai language

Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language. The majority of its speakers, roughly 105 000, are in Liberia with smaller populations residing in Sierra Leone( [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=vai] ). It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin script. This Vai script is a syllabary invented by Unicode|Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ around 1833, although dates as early as 1815 have been alleged. The Vai script was used to print the New Testament in the Vai language, dedicated in 2003.

Phonology

Vai is a tonal language and has 12 vowels and 31 consonants, which are tabulated below.

Vowels

Consonants

IPA| [r] and IPA| [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.

References

* http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=vai

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/jglavy/linguistics.html Jason Glavy's Language Fonts Page]
* [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=vai Ethnologue on Vai]
* [http://www.theperspective.org/2005/pressreleases/vaiscript.html Vai Script workshop]
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/vai.htm Omniglot entry on Vai script]
* [http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/inscribing/vai.html Smithsonian exhibit on Vai and other African scripts]
* [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.interpreters29jul29,0,7456461.story Article on dismissed court case due to lack of Vai interpreter]
* [http://dictionary.kasahorow.com/all/vai Online Vai language dictionary]
* [http://www.unicode.org/udhr/d/udhr_vai.pdf Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vai]