Vai syllabary

Infobox Writing system
name= Vai
type= Syllabary
typedesc=
time= 1830's - present
languages= Vai
fam1=Cherokee syllabary (disputed)
sisters=
children=
sample=Vaiscript-fiveexamples.pngimagesize= 200px
iso15924= Vaii
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400px|thumb|right|The_greater_part_of_the_modern_Vai_syllabary._IPA| [ɛ, ɔ] . The "jg" on the bottom row is IPA| [ŋɡ] . Not shown are syllables beginning with "g, h, w, m, n, ny, ng IPA| [ŋ] ," and vowels.] The Vai syllabary was devised by Unicode|Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ of Jondu, in what is now Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia. He is regarded within the Vai community, as well as by most scholars, as the syllabary’s inventor and chief promoter when it was first documented in the 1830s.

In recent years, evidence has emerged suggesting that the Cherokee syllabary of 1819 provided a model for the design of the Vai syllabary (Tuchscherer 2002). The link appears to have been Cherokee who emigrated to Liberia. One such man, Cherokee Austin Curtis, married into a prominent Vai family and became an important Vai chief himself. It is perhaps not coincidence that the "inscription on a house" that drew the world's attention to existence of the Vai syllabary was in fact on the home of Curtis, a Cherokee.

Vai is a simple syllabic script written from left to right that represents CV syllables; a final nasal is written with the same glyph as the Vai syllabic nasal. Originally there were separate glyphs for syllables ending in a nasal, such as "don," with a long vowel, such as "soo," with a diphthong, such as "bai," as well as "bili" and "sεli." However, these have been dropped from the modern script.

The syllabary did not distinguish all the syllables of the Vai language until the 1960s when University of Liberia added distinctions by modifying certain glyphs with dots or extra strokes to cover all CV syllables in use. There are relatively few glyphs for nasal vowels because not only a few occur with each consonant.

Vai in Unicode

The Unicode range for Vai is U+A500 .. U+A63F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

References

* Konrad Tuchscherer. 2005. "History of Writing in Africa." In "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience" (second edition), ed. by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 476-480. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Konrad Tuchscherer. 2002 (with P.E.H. Hair). "Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script," "History in Africa", 29, pp. 427-486.
* Konrad Tuchscherer. 2001. "The Vai Script," in "Liberia: Africa's First Republic" (Footsteps magazine). Petersborough, NH: Cobbblestone Press.
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* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/vai.htm Vai Syllabary]

External links

* [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://www.geocities.com/jglavy/linguistics.html Jason Glavy's Language Fonts for PC]
* [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=VaiUnicode SIL on Vai]