Bassa Vah alphabet

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
DirectionLeft-to-right 
LanguagesBassa [ISO 639-3:bsq]
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Bass (259), ​Bassa Vah
Unicode
Unicode alias
Bassa Vah
Final accepted Unicode proposal, U+16AD0 – U+16AFF[1]

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. Everson, Michael; Riley, Charles (2010). "Final proposal for encoding the Bassa Vah script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF).
  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. "History of the Bassa Script". Bassa Vah Association. Archived from the original on 2007-02-22.
  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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