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 | i | u | ĩ | ũ |
| Close-mid | e | o | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | ɛ̃ | ɔ̃ |
| Open | a | ã | ||
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar or palatal |
Velar | Labial-velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops and affricates |
Voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | k͡p | |
| Voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | ||
| Prenasalized | ɲd͡ʒ | ŋɡ | ŋ͡mɡ͡b | ||||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||
| Prenasalized implosive | mɓ | nɗ | |||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | ||
| Voiced | v | z | |||||
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Approximants | l | j | w | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
[r] and [ʃ] occur only in recent loanwords.