How it began
Gbili, a paramount chief from Sanoyea in Bong County, central Liberia, invented the Kpelle script in the 1930s according to all accounts collected by the ethnomusicologist Ruth Stone. The script was said to have been revealed to him in a dream. It first appeared in the scholarly literature in 1937. Sanoyea, a town on the trade route from the Liberian coast to Guinea, became the center for teaching it.
How it works
The script is a syllabary read from left to right. Where Kpelle has pairs of related sounds that alternate by grammar, such as "ta" (town) and "da" (the town), one symbol serves for both, which keeps the number of characters small. Marks can be added to show heavy voice, low tone and vowel length. A set of numerals was added later.
How it spread
From the start the Kpelle intended the script as a tool for an elite. It was taught at Sanoyea in the 1930s and 1940s to small groups without charge and was used by chiefs and their clerks. When Stone began studying it in 1970 it was in use for hut tax records, the accounts of a store and records of court debts.
Who pushed back
The script did not grow beyond its first circles. The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets reports that it declined after local missions adopted a Latin-based writing system for Kpelle. The spoken language remains strong, but the script was never taught widely in schools.
Where it stands today
Stone published a chart of the characters in 1990, including twelve not published before, and discussed influences from Islamic mystical symbols and older pictographic signs. The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets lists the script as endangered, notes interest in Liberia and Guinea and reports a pilot project that taught it to 49 students.
