Vai script

Indigenous script, a syllabary invented by Duala Bukare in the 1820s or 1830s. (Ethnologue)

It is used for the Vai language of Liberia and Sierra Leone. A draft proposal to encode it in Unicode is in advanced stages.

Developing the proposals for Vai in Unicode

Proposals

A main proposal and two supplementary ones are currently under discussion:

N2948
Proposal to add the Vai script to the BMP of the UCS
Michael Everson, Charles Riley, and José Rivera
Date: 2005-08-01
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2948.pdf

N3081
Proposal for addition of Vai characters
Michael Everson, Mohamed Nyei, Charles Riley, Tombekai Sherman
2006-04-23
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3081.pdf

N3243
Proposal to add additional historic syllables for Vai to the UCS
Michael Everson
2007-04-17
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3243.pdf

Process

There are a number of experts who have been working on the above, and their effort has involved some meetings such as:

• Vai Script Workshop (New York, USA, April 2005) http://www.theperspective.org/2005/pressreleases/vaiscript.html

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

Other sources

• Omniglot, "Vai," http://www.omniglot.com/writing/vai.htm
• Wikipedia, "Vai script," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vai_script

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