Vai language
| Vai | |
|---|---|
| ꕙꔤ | |
| Native to | Liberia, Sierra Leone |
| Region | Africa |
Native speakers | (120,000 cited 1991–2006)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
| Vai syllabary | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | vai |
| ISO 639-3 | vai |
| Glottolog | vaii1241 |
The Vai language, also 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.[2]
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[3] and independently by Rev. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, a Sierra Leone agent of the Church Missionary Society of London.[4]
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.
Vowels
| Oral vowels | Nasal vowels | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | |
| Close | i i | u u | ĩ ĩ | ũ ũ |
| Close-mid | e e | o o | ɛ̃ ɛ̃ | ɔ̃ ɔ̃ |
| Open-mid | ɛ ɛ | ɔ ɔ | ||
| Open | a a | ã ã | ||
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-al. /palatal |
Velar | Labial -velar |
Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Stop/ Affricate |
p |
b mb |
t |
d nd |
c |
ɟ ɲɟ |
k |
g ŋɡ |
k͡p |
ŋ͡mɡ͡b |
||
| Implosive | ɓ | l ~ ɗ | ɠ͡ɓ | |||||||||
| Fricatives | f | v | s | z | (ʃ) | h | ||||||
| Approximant (Lateral) |
j | w | ||||||||||
| l ~ ɗ | ||||||||||||
| Trill | (r) | |||||||||||
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.[clarification needed from which language?]
See also
- A Grammar of Vai, by William E. Welmers, 1977
- Vai syllabary
References
- ^ Vai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Ethnologue report for Vai
- ^ "Report of Messrs. Wilson and Wynkoop". Missionary Herald. June 1834. p. 215.
- ^ "A Written language in Western Africa". The New-Jerusalem magazine. 23 (10). A. Howard: 431.
External links
- Vai Script workshop
- Omniglot entry on Vai script
- Smithsonian exhibit on Vai and other African scripts
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vai
| National | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
 | This article about Mande languages is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |