Bassa alphabet

"The Bassa script, known as Bassa vah or simply vah ('throwing a sign' in Bassa) is an alphabet for writing the Bassa language of Liberia. Its creation is attributed to Dr. Thomas Flo Lewis, who has instigated publishing of limited materials in the language from the mid-1900s through the 1930s, with its height in the 1910s and 1920s. It is alleged that some of the signs are based on native Bassa pictograms revealed by a former slave. It is not clear what connection it may have had with neighboring scripts, but type was cast for it, and an association for its promotion was formed in Liberia in 1959." (Wikipedia, accessed 2 Nov 2015)

"The original writing direction was boustrophedon (alternating between right to left and left to right, but the alphabet has been written from left to right since the 1960s." (Omniglot)

The Bassa alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

ISO-15924

Source: Codes for the representation of names of scripts / Codes pour la représentation des noms d’écritures, http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html

References & other links

• Omniglot, "Bassa (Vah) alphabet" http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bassa.htm
• ScriptSource http://scriptsource.org/scr/Bass
• Unicode, "Bassa Vah. Range: 16AD0–16AFF" http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U16AD0.pdf
• Wikipedia
  • EN
    • "Bassa alphabet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassa_alphabet
    • "Bassa Vah (Unicode block)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassa_Vah_(Unicode_block)
  • FR
    • "Alphabet bassa" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_bassa

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