Vai syllabary
writing system constructed in the 1830s for the Vai language in Liberia
The Vai syllabary is a syllabic writing system devised for the Vai language by Momolu Duwalu Bukele of Jondu, in what is now Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia. Bukele is regarded within the Vai community, as well as by most scholars, as the syllabary's inventor and chief promoter when it was first documented in the 1830s. It is one of the two most successful indigenous scripts in West Africa in terms of the number of current users and the availability of literature written in the script, the other being the N'Ko script.
Structure of the script
Vai is a syllabic script written from left to right that represents CV syllables; a final nasal is written with the same glyph as the Vai syllabic nasal. Originally there were separate glyphs for syllables ending in a nasal, such as don, with a long vowel, such as soo, with a diphthong, such as bai, as well as bili and sɛli. However, these have been dropped from the modern script.
The syllabary did not distinguish all the syllables of the Vai language until the 1960s when the University of Liberia added distinctions by modifying certain glyphs with dots or extra strokes to cover all CV syllables in use. There are relatively few glyphs for nasal vowels because only a few occur with each consonant.
The symbols used to write words evolved to become visually simpler over time, and an analysis has shown that they can change over just a few generations.
Possible link with Cherokee
In the 1960s scholars began suggesting that the Cherokee syllabary of North America may have provided a model for the design of the Vai syllabary in Liberia.
“Vai syllabary” enters the record as writing system constructed in the 1830s for the Vai language in Liberia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what syllabary, writing and system can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vai syllabary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.