Bassa Vah alphabet
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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]
| Bassa Vah 𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱 | |
|---|---|
| Script type | |
| Direction | Left-to-right  |
| Languages | bassa language |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Bass (259), Bassa Vah |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Bassa Vah |
| Final accepted Unicode proposal, U+16AD0 – U+16AFF[1] | |
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 𖫵.
𖫧 IPA: [a] a |
𖫢 IPA: [b] b |
𖫔 IPA: [ɓ]/[mᵇ] ɓ |
𖫟 IPA: [c] c |
𖫗 IPA: [d] d |
𖫦 IPA: [ɖ]/[ɺ] ɖ |
𖫕 IPA: [dʲ]/[ɲ] dy |
𖫫 IPA: [e] e |
𖫬 IPA: [ɛ] ɛ |
𖫓 IPA: [f] f |
𖫖 IPA: [g] g |
𖫝 IPA: [ɡ͡b] gb |
𖫔 IPA: [ŋ͡m] gm |
𖫤 IPA: [h] h |
𖫠 IPA: [hʷ] hw |
𖫭 IPA: [i] i |
𖫙 IPA: [ɟ] j |
𖫑 IPA: [k] k |
𖫘 IPA: [k͡p] kp |
𖫐 IPA: [n] n |
𖫨 IPA: [ɔ] ɔ |
𖫩 IPA: [o] o |
𖫥 IPA: [p] p |
𖫒 IPA: [s] s |
𖫡 IPA: [t] t |
𖫪 IPA: [u] u |
𖫣 IPA: [v] v |
𖫛 IPA: [w] w |
𖫚 IPA: [xʷ]/[ħʷ] xw |
𖫜 IPA: [z] z |
Vah uses five diacritical marks to denote tonality of its vowels. It distinguishes five tones: high, low, mid, mid-rising, and falling.
high 𖫰◌ IPA: ˦ |
low 𖫱◌ IPA: ˨ |
mid 𖫲◌ IPA: ˧ |
mid-rising 𖫳◌ IPA: ˨˧ |
falling 𖫴◌ IPA: ˥˩ |
𖫰𖫧 |
𖫧𖫱 |
𖫲𖫧 |
𖫳𖫧 |
𖫧𖫴 |
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) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+16ADx | 𖫐 | 𖫑 | 𖫒 | 𖫓 | 𖫔 | 𖫕 | 𖫖 | 𖫗 | 𖫘 | 𖫙 | 𖫚 | 𖫛 | 𖫜 | 𖫝 | 𖫞 | 𖫟 |
| U+16AEx | 𖫠 | 𖫡 | 𖫢 | 𖫣 | 𖫤 | 𖫥 | 𖫦 | 𖫧 | 𖫨 | 𖫩 | 𖫪 | 𖫫 | 𖫬 | 𖫭 | ||
| U+16AFx | 𖫰 | 𖫱 | 𖫲 | 𖫳 | 𖫴 | 𖫵 | ||||||||||
| Notes | ||||||||||||||||
- ^ a b Everson, Michael; Riley, Charles (2010). "Final proposal for encoding the Bassa Vah script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ 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.
- ^ "History of the Bassa Script". Bassa Vah Association. Archived from the original on 2007-02-22.
- ^ Unseth, Peter (2011). "Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization". In Joshua A. Fishman; Ofelia García (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.
