Vai syllable na

It marks a spoken syllable used to build a Vai word.

Vai is written from left to right, with spaces between words. In context, ꕯ contributes its syllable to the word; alone, it cannot show which complete word or passage it came from.

What is the history of the Vai script?

The Vai syllabary grew from a 19th-century literacy project.

It took recognizable form around 1833 in Jondu, Liberia, in a project linked to Momolu Duwalu Bukele and collaborators. It served practical writing: correspondence, books, teaching, trade records, history, and religious texts. A Vai school was operating by 1834; The Book of Ndole, a Vai-language work, was composed before 1849.

Early Vai writing drew on local graphic practices used for communication, war, and divination, alongside neighboring Arabic and Latin literacy traditions. It included logograms (signs for words or ideas). From the 1840s to the 1960s, most were dropped as the system became more phonetic. A 19th-century origin story described the writing system as divinely sanctioned and as a sign of Vai autonomy. Cherokee contact has been proposed, but it remains conjectural; the better-supported connection is to local graphic practices.

How do I type ꕯ?

Use a Vai transliteration layout or Unicode input.

The MediaWiki Vai transliteration instructions, updated 8 September 2023, map n followed by a to ꕯ. This layout turns a Latin-key sequence into a Vai character.