Bassa Vah alphabet

Bassa Vah, also known as simply vah ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabet for writing the Bassa language of Liberia. It was invented by Dr. Thomas Flo Lewis. Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959. It is not used contemporarily and has been classified as a failed script.[2]

Bassa Vah
𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱
Directionleft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Bass (259), ​Bassa Vah
Unicode
Unicode alias
Bassa Vah
U+16AD0 – U+16AFF[1]
The Bassa vah alphabet.

Vah is a true alphabet, with 23 consonant letters, 7 vowel letters, and 5 tone diacritics, which are placed inside the vowels. It also has its own marks for commas and periods.

Letters

The Bassa Vah alphabet is written from left to right. A fullstop/period is represented with π–«΅.

Letters
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

Bassa 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
Main article: Bassa Vah (Unicode block)

The Bassa Vah alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

The Unicode block for the Bassa alphabet 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 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

References
  • Coulmas (1999) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems
  1. Final accepted Unicode proposalFinal Accepted Script Proposal
  2. Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization. In The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia GarcΓ­a, pp. 23-32. New York: Oxford University Press.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.