Vai syllabary

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.{{Clarify|Only before nasal consonants? A few occur phonemically?|date=August 2011}}

The symbols used to write words evolved to become visually simpler over time, and an analysis has shown that they can do so over just a few generations.{{Cite web|last=Barras|first=Colin|date=11 January 2022|title=A West African writing system shows how letters evolve to get simpler|url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/2303865-a-west-african-writing-system-shows-how-letters-evolve-to-get-simpler/|access-date=2022-01-11|website=New Scientist|language=en-US}}Kelly, Piers, James Winters, Helena Miton, and Olivier Morin. "The predictable evolution of letter shapes: An emergent script of West Africa recapitulates historical change in writing systems." Current Anthropology 62, no. 6 (2021):669-691.

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.{{cite book |last1=Summitt |first1=April R. |title=Sequoyah and the Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet |date=2012 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-39177-4 |page=83 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g-8tJXrLCQoC&dq=Vai+syllabary+cherokee&pg=PA143 |access-date=25 July 2022 |language=en}} The Vai syllabary emerged about 1832/33. This was at a time when American missionaries were working to use the Cherokee syllabary as a model for writing Liberian languages.{{cite book |last1=Appiah |first1=Anthony |last2=Gates (Jr.) |first2=Henry Louis |editor1-last=Appiah |editor1-first=Anthony |editor2-last=Gates Jr. |editor2-first=Henry Louis= |editor1-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr. |title=Encyclopedia of Africa |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-533770-9 |page=552 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A0XNvklcqbwC&dq=Vai+syllabary+cherokee&pg=RA1-PA552 |access-date=25 July 2022 |language=en}} Another link may have been Cherokee who emigrated to Liberia after the invention of the Cherokee syllabary (which in its early years spread rapidly among the Cherokee) but before the invention of the Vai syllabary. One such man, Cherokee Austin Curtis, married into a prominent Vai family and became an important Vai chief himself. The romantic "inscription on a house" that first drew the world's attention to the existence of the Vai script was in fact on the home of Curtis, a Cherokee.{{cite journal |last1= Tuchscherer |first1= Konrad |last2=Hair |first2=P.E.H. |title= Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the origins of the Vai script |year= 2002 |journal= History in Africa |volume= 29 |pages= 427–486 |doi= 10.2307/3172173 |jstor=3172173 |s2cid= 162073602 }}

What we can be reasonably sure about is that Curtis was not only a well-connected and influential man within the Vai community, but one who spoke the Vai language and adopted Vai customs, who settled in Vai country some four years before the invention of the Vai script, and who later appears to have welcomed the use of the script on his house. If Curtis was informed about the Cherokee script, if he was already resident at Cape Mount by 1827/28, and if he made contact with any of the mission party at Big Town - Revey or even his Vai-speaking assistants – it is conceivable that the notion of a syllabary reached the Vai by this route – but perhaps not very likely. Finally, whether the argument from coincidence should have any weight is difficult to say, but that two new scripts sharing the same basic structure, invented a continent apart within little more than a decade of each other, can each be linked, however tenuously (given the limited evidence), to the same individual, may reasonably be regarded as at least singular. (Tuchscherer and Hair 2002)

Vai has distinct basic punctuation marks:

Additional punctuation marks are taken from European usage.

The oldest Vai texts used various logograms. Of these, only {{script|Vai|ꘓ}} and {{script|Vaii|ꘘ}} are still in use.

• Modern ; at the time now-obsolete ꘑ was used for .

Vai uses Arabic numerals (0–9). In the 1920s Vai-specific digits were developed but never adopted:{{cite web

|url=http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3081.pdf

|title=ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N3081R: Proposal for addition of Vai characters to the UCS

|access-date=22 February 2012}}

One of Momolu Duwalu Bukele's cousins, Kaali Bala Ndole Wano, wrote a long manuscript around 1845 called the Book of Ndole or Book of Rora under the pen name Rora.

This roughly fifty page manuscript contains several now obsolete symbols:

{{Main|Vai (Unicode block)}}

The Vai syllabary was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.

In Windows 7 and earlier, since this version only gives names for characters released in Unicode 5.0 and earlier, the names will either be blank (Microsoft Word applications) or "Undefined" (Character Map).

The Unicode block for Vai is U+A500–U+A63F. Code points in this block are contiguous without the gaps shown in the "Syllables" table above.

{{Unicode chart Vai}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite web |first=Michael |last=Everson |author-link=Michael Everson |author2=Charles Riley |author3=José Rivera |url=http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2948.pdf|title=Proposal to add the Vai script to the BMP of the UCS |date=2005-08-01 |publisher=International Organization for Standardization |work=Working Group Document}}
• Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh. 1963. "The Seminar on the Standardization of the Vai script," in University of Liberia Journal Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 15–37.
• {{cite web |url= http://www.omniglot.com/writing/vai.htm |title= Vai syllabary |work= Omniglot |access-date=16 June 2010}}
• Kelly, Piers, James Winters, Helena Miton, and Olivier Morin. "The predictable evolution of letter shapes: An emergent script of West Africa recapitulates historical change in writing systems." Current Anthropology 62, no. 6 (2021). [on simplifications over time for Vai symbols]
• Tuchscherer, Konrad. 2005. "History of Writing in Africa." In Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (second edition), ed. by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 476–480. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Tuchscherer, Konrad. 2002 (with P.E.H. Hair). "Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script," History in Africa, 29, pp. 427–486.
• Tuchscherer, Konrad. 2001. "The Vai Script," in Liberia: Africa's First Republic (Footsteps magazine). Petersborough, NH: Cobblestone Press.
• Tykhostup, Olena and Piers Kelly. 2017. "A diachronic comparison of the Vai script of Liberia (1834–2005)." Journal of Open Humanities Data 4:2. {{doi|10.5334/johnd.10|doi-access=free}}.

• [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=vai Ethnologue on Vai]
• [http://www.africanholocaust.net/scriptsofafrica.html Scripts of Africa]
• [http://www.athinkra.com/?q=content/keyboard-software Input tool and Unicode font for using Vai on Windows XP]
• [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=VaiUnicode SIL on Vai]

{{list of writing systems}}

Category:Syllabary writing systems

Category:Writing systems of Africa

Category:Vai language

Category:Constructed scripts

Category:1830 introductions

Category:1830 establishments in Africa

Category:Writing systems introduced in the 19th century