Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language. The majority of its speakers, roughly 105 000, are in Liberia with smaller populations residing 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 Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ around 1833, although dates as early as 1815 have been alleged. The Vai script was used to print the New Testament in the Vai language, dedicated in 2003.
Contents |
Phonology
Vai is a
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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops 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 | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.
References
External links
- Jason Glavy's Language Fonts Page
- Ethnologue on Vai
- Vai Script workshop
- Omniglot entry on Vai script
- Smithsonian exhibit on Vai and other African scripts
- Article on dismissed court case due to lack of Vai interpreter
- Online Vai language dictionary
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vai
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