What ꔸ means
It contributes one syllable to a Vai word. Each sign corresponds to a syllable; Vai runs left to right, and words normally have no spaces between them.
The Vai script took shape in Liberia in the early 1830s. A missionary account from 1834 says it was made for correspondence like letters used in Monrovia; the earliest surviving manuscript is dated 1849.
Accounts of its creation tell of a dream or a challenge among Vai men. Its signs simplified over generations and served correspondence and record keeping, especially among merchants and traders. Earlier Vai texts also used logograms (signs for whole words); ꔸ is a syllable sign. Proposed ties to Latin and Arabic remain uncertain; the Cherokee link is conjectural.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꔸ
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Questions people ask
1Why does ꔸ 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 ꔸ
- Search it as
- vai syllable · vai script
- 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.