Bassa alphabet

The Bassa font, proper name Bassa Vah vah or simply ( ' throw a character' in Bassa) is the alphabet of the Bassa people for their language Bassa, a Kru language.

History

The font was developed in 1907 with the help of Liberian missionaries. The first primer was printed by the Lyman Brothers circa 1907. To spread the Scriptures helped Thomas Narvin Lewis ( c. 1880 - ), while he was studying in the United States in the Syracuse University. Dr. Lewis returned to Liberia, where he started teaching his writing to Bassa children ..

A typography was designed for writing and in 1959 an association for the promotion of writing in Liberia was founded. Nowadays, there is however no longer needed and is counted among the " extinct " writing systems.

The writing had a certain relation to the writing systems of the neighboring peoples, and was also used in the past. It is described as a script, which, is how the system of West African Vai script from a series of phonetic characters, each representing syllables. Nevertheless, the Vah script is an alphabetic script: It consists of 30 consonants, seven vowels and five pitches that are inserted made ​​of dots and lines in each vowel.

The IPA has replaced publications in the Vah font for the most part. Nowadays, the Vah script is indeed highly respected, but is only used by some older Bassa for record keeping.