Vai language

Vai
ꕙꔤ
Native to	Liberia, Sierra Leone
Region	sub-Saharan Africa
Native speakers	(120,000 cited 1991–2006)
Language family	Niger–Congo Mande Western Mande Central Manding–Jogo Manding–Vai Vai–Kono Vai
Writing system	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.

Writing system

Main article: Vai syllabary

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 and independently by Rev. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, a Sierra Leone agent of the Church Mission Society of London.

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	u	ĩ	ũ
Close-mid	e	o	ɛ̃	ɔ̃
Open-mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a		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					ɡ͡ɓ
Fricatives	f	v	s	z	(ʃ)						h
Approximant (Lateral)						j				w
				l ~ ɗ
Trill				(r)

[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.

See also

• A Grammar of Vai, by William E. Welmers, 1977

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