Bassa Vah, also known as simply vah ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabetic script for writing the Bassa language of Liberia.[citation needed] It was invented by Dr. Thomas Flo Lewis.[citation needed] Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959.[citation needed] It is not used contemporarily and has been classified as a failed script.[2]
Bassa Vah 𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱 | |
---|---|
Direction | left-to-right |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Bass (259), Bassa Vah |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Bassa Vah |
Unicode range | U+16AD0 – U+16AFF[1] |
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.[citation needed]
The Bassa Vah script is written from left to right. A fullstop/period is represented with 𖫵.
This article or section should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. (May 2022) |
IPA | Latin | Bassa Vah | IPA | Latin | Bassa Vah | IPA | Latin | Bassa Vah |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[a] | A/a | 𖫧 | [g] | G/g | 𖫖 | [ɔ] | Ɔ/ɔ | 𖫨 |
[b] | B/b | 𖫢 | [ɡ͡b] | Gb/gb | 𖫝 | [o] | O/o | 𖫩 |
[ɓ]/[mᵇ] | Ɓ/ɓ | 𖫔 | [ŋ͡m] | Gm/gm | 𖫔 | [p] | P/p | 𖫥 |
[c] | C/c | 𖫟 | [h] | H/h | 𖫤 | [s] | S/s | 𖫒 |
[d] | D/d | 𖫗 | [hʷ] | Hw/hw | 𖫠 | [t] | T/t | 𖫡 |
[ɖ]/[ɺ] | Đ/ɖ | 𖫦 | [i] | I/i | 𖫭 | [u] | U/u | 𖫪 |
[dʲ]/[ɲ] | Dy/dy | 𖫕 | [ɟ] | J/j | 𖫙 | [v] | V/v | 𖫣 |
[e] | E/e | 𖫫 | [k] | K/k | 𖫑 | [w] | W/w | 𖫛 |
[ɛ] | Ɛ/ɛ | 𖫬 | [k͡p] | Kp/kp | 𖫘 | [xʷ]/[ħʷ] | Xw/xw | 𖫚 |
[f] | F/f | 𖫓 | [n] | N/n | 𖫐 | [z] | Z/z | 𖫜 |
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 |
---|---|---|---|
˦ | á | 𖫧𖫰 | 𖫰◌ |
˨ | à | 𖫧𖫱 | 𖫱◌ |
˧ | a | 𖫧𖫲 | 𖫲◌ |
˨˧ | ă | 𖫧𖫳 | 𖫳◌ |
˥˩ | â | 𖫧𖫴 | 𖫴◌ |
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) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+16ADx | 𖫐 | 𖫑 | 𖫒 | 𖫓 | 𖫔 | 𖫕 | 𖫖 | 𖫗 | 𖫘 | 𖫙 | 𖫚 | 𖫛 | 𖫜 | 𖫝 | 𖫞 | 𖫟 |
U+16AEx | 𖫠 | 𖫡 | 𖫢 | 𖫣 | 𖫤 | 𖫥 | 𖫦 | 𖫧 | 𖫨 | 𖫩 | 𖫪 | 𖫫 | 𖫬 | 𖫭 | ||
U+16AFx | 𖫰 | 𖫱 | 𖫲 | 𖫳 | 𖫴 | 𖫵 | ||||||||||
Notes |