Bassa language

Spoken in

• Niger - Congo Atlantic - Congo Benue - Congo Kru west

Bsq

The Bassa language is a West African Kru language, which is spoken by 350,000 inhabitants of Liberia and 5,000 Sierraleonern by the people of Bassa.

The language has its own system of writing, the Vah. Vah is a true alphabet with 30 letters for consonants, 7 vowels and 5 diacritics, which are placed in the vowels. The language was already informed the late 19th century in some schools the Poro society.

In the 1970s, the United Bible Societies (UBS) published a translation of the New Testament. June Hobley, from the Liberia Inland Mission, was chiefly responsible for the translation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA ) was used rather for the translation as the Vah script, mainly for practical reasons of pressure, since the Bassa people had their own script tradition, they quickly took to the new font, and thousands learned to write.

In 2005, UBS published a complete Bible in Bassa. The translation was supported by the Christian Education Foundation of Liberia, the Christian Reformed World Missions, and UBS. Don Slager led a team of certified translators, including Seokin Payne, Robert Glaybo, and William Boen.