Bassa Vah alphabet
Bassa Vah, also known as simply Vah, meaning 'throwing a sign' in Bassa, is an alphabetic script for writing the Bassa language of Liberia. 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. Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959. It is not used today and has been classified as a failed script.
Letters
Vah is written from left to right. It is a true alphabet, with 23 consonant letters, 7 vowels, and 5 tone diacritics.A full-stop/period is represented with.
The letter is pronounced as /ɓ/ <ɓ> when followed by an oral vowel, for example <ɓâ>. However, it's pronounced as /m/
The letter is pronounced as /dʲ/
The letter is pronounced as /ɡ͡b/
The letter is pronounced as /ɾ/ when written after /d/ or /t/ - /to˧ɾo˧/, and is pronounced as /ɺ/ when written after any other consonants - /fu˦ɺu˦/. This letter is never immediately followed by a nasal vowel.
The letter is rarely used. It represents the sound /ɾ/, which is an allophone of /ɗ/, and appears only after /t/ or /d/ in a syllable initial 'cluster'. But this is usually written with the letter.
Nasal vowels are written with the letter after a corresponding vowel letter.
Tones
Vah uses five diacritical marks to denote tonality of its vowels. It distinguishes five tones: high, low, mid, mid-rising, and falling.The letters table shows the alphabetic order of the script. The tones above reflect the order they appear in the alphabet order as well. A vowel with tones are ordered before the subsequent vowel. For example, the vowel is followed by and then the next vowel, <ɔ>, is ordered.
Sample texts
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: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: