How it began
Momolu Duwalu Bukele of Jondu, in what is now Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia, devised the syllabary for the Vai language. Sapiens dates the event to about 1833 and reports that Bukele said the script came to him in a dream. The Vai community and most scholars regard him as its inventor and chief promoter, and a journal study credits Bukele and others. It was first documented in the 1830s.
How it works
Each sign stands for a syllable, usually a consonant plus a vowel, and the script is written from left to right. The early script had about 200 symbols. Later users added signs so that every consonant and vowel combination was covered, and the script has its own punctuation. Researchers have found that the letter shapes became simpler over generations of use.
How it spread
Sapiens reports that the script was adopted quickly and put to many uses, from personal inscriptions to scholarly texts. It is used mainly for Vai and has also been used for Gola. Wikipedia describes it as one of the two most successful indigenous scripts in West Africa by number of users and available literature, alongside N'Ko.
What lasted
The syllabary gave linguists a rare case of a script whose whole history is documented. Studies of its manuscripts show writing simplifying over time under the pressure of memory and use. Some scholars have debated whether the Cherokee syllabary influenced it. Within Liberia it remains a mark of Vai identity.
Where it stands today
Work to encode Vai in the Unicode Standard began in 2005 with linguists, typographers and members of the Liberian diaspora, and the script was added in 2008, so it can be used on computers and phones. A 2024 article in the Liberian Studies Journal notes that literacy in the script is now low, while online dictionaries and fonts support its preservation.
