What ꗗ means
Its romanized reading is co, roughly “chaw.”
The first sound is like ch in “church,” followed by an open o. This sign represents one spoken syllable, not a whole sentence.
How did the Vai script begin?
In Liberia in the early 1830s, as a writing system for Vai. Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ is widely credited with developing and promoting it; by 1834, a school at Jondu taught reading and writing.
The Book of Ndole, an early Vai manuscript, mixed syllable signs with logograms (signs for whole words); most logograms were dropped by the 1960s. Accounts from the early 1830s tell of a spirit-given “Vai book,” linking literacy with community standing.
Cherokee writing has been proposed as an influence because it too is a syllabary. The scripts’ direct historical connection remains possible but unproven as of 2026.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꗗ
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Questions people ask
1Why does ꗗ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find ꗗ
- Search it as
- Vai script · Vai syllabary · Vai writing · Vai language · Vai alphabet · Vai characters
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.