Bassa Vah
𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱
Script type
Directionleft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
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]
The 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]

Letters

Vah is written from left to right. It is a true alphabet, with 23 consonant letters, 7 vowel letters and 5 tone diacritics, which are placed inside the vowels. A fullstop/period is represented with π–«΅.

IPA Latin Bassa Vah IPA Latin Bassa Vah IPA Latin Bassa Vah
[a] A/a 𖫧 [g] G/g π–«– [Ι”] Ζ†/Ι” 𖫨
[b] B/b π–«’ [Ι‘Ν‘b] Gb/gb 𖫝 [o] O/o π–«©
[Ι“]/[mᡇ] Ɓ/Ι“ π–«” [Ε‹Ν‘m] Gm/gm π–«” [p] P/p π–«₯
[c] C/c π–«Ÿ [h] H/h π–«€ [s] S/s π–«’
[d] D/d π–«— [hΚ·] Hw/hw π–«  [t] T/t π–«‘
[Ι–]/[ΙΊ] Đ/Ι– 𖫦 [i] I/i π–«­ [u] U/u π–«ͺ
[dΚ²]/[Ι²] Dy/dy π–«• [ɟ] J/j π–«™ [v] V/v π–«£
[e] E/e π–«« [k] K/k π–«‘ [w] W/w π–«›
[Ι›] Ɛ/Ι› 𖫬 [kΝ‘p] Kp/kp π–«˜ [xΚ·]/[Δ§Κ·] Xw/xw π–«š
[f] F/f π–«“ [n] N/n 𖫐 [z] Z/z π–«œ

Tones

Vah uses 5 diacritical marks to denote tonality of its vowels. It distinguishes five tones: high, low, mid, mid-rising, and falling.

IPA Latin with a Vah with 𖫧 Vah diacritic
Λ¦ Γ‘ 𖫧𖫰 π–«°β—Œ
Λ¨ Γ  𖫧𖫱 π–«±β—Œ
Λ§ a 𖫧𖫲 π–«²β—Œ
Λ¨Λ§ Δƒ 𖫧𖫳 π–«³β—Œ
Λ₯Λ© Γ’ 𖫧𖫴 π–«΄β—Œ

Unicode

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. 1 2 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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