Vai Syllable No

ꗟ represents a Vai syllable with n and an open-o vowel. The Vai syllabary arose in Liberia in the early 1830s and later influenced other West African scripts.

Text symbol

What ꗟ means

It contributes one short syllable. Unicode’s “No” is Latin spelling of its sound, not English negation. The sign may be a whole Vai word or part of one.

Mọmọlu Duwalu Bukẹlẹ developed the script in Liberia to write Vai and later said a dream inspired it. A 1834 report records a book and sample; The Book of Ndole dates to around 1845.

Vai writing served correspondence, trade, records and religious texts. Early forms used signs for whole words and syllables later dropped; standardization efforts came in 1899 and 1962. Its syllabic design influenced Mende, Loma and Kpelle. Possible links to Latin, Arabic, Cherokee or earlier picture-based Vai writing remain debated.

Part of the collection

ꕙ

Vai Script

Who writes ꗟ

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Questions people ask

Why does ꗟ 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.