Bassa Vah alphabet

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

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.

Tones

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

Unicode

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:

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