Bassa Vah alphabet

Bassa Vah, also known as simply Vah ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabetic script for writing the Bassa language of Liberia.^[2] 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 Thomas Flo Lewis.^[3] Type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959.^[1] It is not used today and has been classified as a failed script.^[4]

Bassa Vah 𖫔𖫧𖫱𖫒𖫨𖫴 𖫣𖫧𖫱
Script type	Alphabet
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	bassa language
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Bass (259), ​Bassa Vah
Unicode
Unicode alias	Bassa Vah
Unicode range	Final accepted Unicode proposal, U+16AD0 – U+16AFF[1]

Letters

Vah is written from left to right. It is a true alphabet, with 23 consonant letters, seven vowels and five tone diacritics. A fullstop/period is represented with 𖫵.

𖫧 IPA: [a] a	𖫢 IPA: [b] b	𖫔 IPA: [ɓ]/[mᵇ] ɓ	𖫟 IPA: [c] c	𖫗 IPA: [d] d	𖫦 IPA: [ɖ]/[ɺ] ɖ	𖫕 IPA: [dʲ]/[ɲ] dy	𖫫 IPA: [e] e	𖫬 IPA: [ɛ] ɛ	𖫓 IPA: [f] f
𖫖 IPA: [g] g	𖫝 IPA: [ɡ͡b] gb	𖫔 IPA: [ŋ͡m] gm	𖫤 IPA: [h] h	𖫠 IPA: [hʷ] hw	𖫭 IPA: [i] i	𖫙 IPA: [ɟ] j	𖫑 IPA: [k] k	𖫘 IPA: [k͡p] kp	𖫐 IPA: [n] n
𖫨 IPA: [ɔ] ɔ	𖫩 IPA: [o] o	𖫥 IPA: [p] p	𖫒 IPA: [s] s	𖫡 IPA: [t] t	𖫪 IPA: [u] u	𖫣 IPA: [v] v	𖫛 IPA: [w] w	𖫚 IPA: [xʷ]/[ħʷ] xw	𖫜 IPA: [z] z

Tones

Vah uses five diacritical marks to denote tonality of its vowels. It distinguishes five tones: high, low, mid, mid-rising, and falling.

Tone diacritics and examples with ⟨𖫧⟩

high 𖫰◌ IPA: ˦	low 𖫱◌ IPA: ˨	mid 𖫲◌ IPA: ˧	mid-rising 𖫳◌ IPA: ˨˧	falling 𖫴◌ IPA: ˥˩
𖫰𖫧	𖫧𖫱	𖫲𖫧	𖫳𖫧	𖫧𖫴

Unicode

Main article: Bassa Vah (Unicode block)

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:

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 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points