Structure of The Script
Vai is a syllabic script written from left to right that represents CV syllables; a final nasal is written with the same glyph as the Vai syllabic nasal. Originally there were separate glyphs for syllables ending in a nasal, such as don, with a long vowel, such as soo, with a diphthong, such as bai, as well as bili and sɛli. However, these have been dropped from the modern script.
The syllabary did not distinguish all the syllables of the Vai language until the 1960s when University of Liberia added distinctions by modifying certain glyphs with dots or extra strokes to cover all CV syllables in use. There are relatively few glyphs for nasal vowels because not only a few occur with each consonant.
Read more about this topic: Vai Syllabary
Famous quotes containing the words structure of the, structure of, structure and/or script:
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“A special feature of the structure of our book is the monstrous but perfectly organic part that eavesdropping plays in it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“Take what the old-church
found in Mithra’s tomb,
candle and script and bell,
take what the new-church spat upon
and broke and shattered.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)