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The Vai script was devised by 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 script’s inventor and chief promoter when it was first documented in the 1830s.
Vai is a simple syllabic script written from left to right. (Strictly speaking, the writing system is based on the mora, a unit of duration [or weight] such that a short syllable has one mora and a long syllable has two. A syllable is long if it contains a long vowel or ends with a consonant.) The Vai language has seven oral vowels [e i a o u ɔ ɛ] and five nasal vowels [ĩ ã ũ ɔ̃ ɛ̃]. Vai has 31 consonants [ŋ h w p b ɓ mɓ kp mgb gb f v t d l r ɗ nɗ s ʃ z tʃ dʒ z ndʒ j k ŋg g m n ɲ] of which [r] and [ʃ] are recent imports into the language.
[edit] 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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