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Information about Vai Language

Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language. The majority of its speakers, roughly 105 000, are in Liberia with smaller populations residing in Sierra Leone([1]). It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin script. This Vai script is a syllabary invented by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ around 1833, although dates as early as 1815 have been alleged.

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 iuĩũ
Close-mid eo  
Open-mid ɛɔɛ̃ɔ̃
Open aã

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Postalveolar
or palatal		 Velar Labial-velar Glottal
Stops and
affricates		 Voicelessptt͡ʃkk͡p
Voicedbdd͡ʒɡɡ͡b
Prenasalizedɲd͡ʒŋɡŋ͡mɡ͡b
Implosiveɓɗ
Prenasalized implosivemɓnɗ
Fricatives Voicelessfsʃh
Voicedvz
Nasalsmnɲŋ
Approximantsljw
Rhoticr
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.

References

External links

Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé people and include Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Bissa, Dioula, Kagoro, Bozo, Mende, Susu, Yacouba, Vai, and Ligbi.
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Motto
"The love of liberty brought us here"
Anthem
All Hail, Liberia, Hail!


Capital Monrovia

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Motto
"Unity - Freedom - Justice"
Anthem
High We Exalt Thee, Realm of the Free


Capital Freetown

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Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Vai script was devised by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ of Jondu, in what is now Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia.
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1800s  1810s  1820s  - 1830s -  1840s  1850s  1860s
1830 1831 1832 - 1833 - 1834 1835 1836

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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A Tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. Tone is a phonological trait common to many languages around the world (though rare in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific). Chinese is perhaps the most well-known of such languages.
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A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation.
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A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation.
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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

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Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). English [m]
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Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth.
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Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate (the place
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Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex.
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Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).
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Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term which can also refer to labialized velars, such as the approximant [w].
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Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be
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stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms.
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Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as [t] or [d]) but release as a fricative (such as [s]
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In phonetics, voice or voicing is one of the three major parameters used to describe a sound. It is usually treated as a binary parameter with sounds being described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced
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In phonetics, voice or voicing is one of the three major parameters used to describe a sound. It is usually treated as a binary parameter with sounds being described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced
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Prenasalized stops are phonetic sequences of nasal plus plosive that behave phonologically like single consonants. That is, like affricates, the reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition.
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Implosive consonants are stops (rarely affricates) with a glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward, rather than by expelling air from the lungs as in normal pulmonic consonants.
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Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These are the lower lip against the upper teeth in the case of [f]
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nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is
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Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence.
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