Native to Liberia, Sierra Leone Writing system Vai syllabary | Region sub-Saharan Africa ISO 639-2 vai | |
Native speakers (120,000 cited 1991–2006) Language family Niger–Congo
Mande
Western Mande
Central
Manding–Jogo
Manding–Vai
Vai–Kono
Vai | ||
The Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by the Vai people, roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone.
Contents
Writing system
Vai is noteworthy for being one of the few African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin or Arabic 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 and independently by Rev. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, a Sierra Leone agent of the Church Mission Society of London.
The Vai script was used to print the New Testament in the Vai language, dedicated in 2003.
Phonology
Vai is a tonal language and has 12 vowels and 31 consonants, which are tabulated below.
Consonants
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.