Vai Language Information
The Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone.[1] It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin script. This Vai script is a syllabary invented by Momolu Duwalu Bukele around 1833, although dates as early as 1815 have been alleged. The existence of Vai was reported in 1834 by American missionaries in the Missionary Herald of the ABCFM [2] and independently by Rev. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, a Sierra Leone agent of the Church Mission Society of London.[3]
The Vai script was used to print the New Testament in the Vai language, dedicated in 2003.
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Phonology
Vai is a tonal language and has 12 vowels and 31 consonants, which are tabulated below.
Vowels
| Oral vowels | Nasal vowels | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | |
| Close | i | u | ĩ | ũ |
| Close-mid | e | o | ɛ̃ | ɔ̃ |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | ||
| Open | a | ã | ||
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar or palatal | Velar | Labial-velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives and affricates | voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | k͡p | |
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | ||
| Prenasalized | ᶮd͡ʒ | ᵑɡ | ᵑ͡ᵐɡ͡b | ||||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||
| Prenasalized implosive | ᵐɓ | ⁿɗ | |||||
| Fricatives | voiceless | f | s | (ʃ) | h | ||
| voiced | v | z | |||||
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Approximants | l | j | w | ||||
| Trill | (r) | ||||||
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.
References
- ^ a b Ethnologue report for Vai
- ^ "Report of Messrs. Wilson and Wynkoop". Missionary Herald: pp. 215. 1834-06.
- ^ "A Written language in Western Africa". The New-Jerusalem magazine (A. Howard) 23 (10): 431. http://books.google.com/books?id=--jNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA431&lpg=PA431&dq=Rev.+Mr.+Koelle&source=bl&ots=-6UK7TJtI7&sig=5B1NIn_TuvpO3357mfZJX1cVEr4&hl=en&ei=tmG3S5fmFcP7lwe-_8mVCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Rev.%20Mr.%20Koelle&f=false.
External links
- Vai Script workshop
- Omniglot entry on Vai script
- Smithsonian exhibit on Vai and other African scripts
- Online Vai language dictionary
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vai
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