A tiny number of Liberians devised a method of writing down the Vai language in the early nineteenth century. Instead of replicating Roman or Arabic characters, as most languages that were originally written down did, they devised their own alphabet. Linguists were able to trace the full history of a written script, which is a rare occurrence. The evolution could put to rest a controversy over how Egyptian hieroglyphics evolved into the letters we use today. The origins of our current letters can trace back to the ancient Egyptian walls. Our letter A, for example, is supposed to have descended from the Egyptian ox’s head via a Phoenician symbol and the Greek alpha.
There are, however, at least two ideas as to why this occurs. “There’s a well-known theory that claims letters evolved from pictures to abstract signs. In early writing, however, there are a lot of abstract letter shapes,” noted Dr. Piers Kelly of the University of New England (Australia) in a statement. Kelly reasoned that comparing the evolution of a screenplay with a documented history would be instructive. Kelly and co-authors describe the evolution of the Vai language script from the 1830s to now in Current Anthropology.
Around 100,000 Liberians, as well as a smaller number in neighboring Sierra Leone and emigrant populations around the world, speak the Vai language. It appears to have been exclusively oral until at least 1800, with no written script. Vai speakers were exposed to the value of writing as former American slaves established themselves in what would become Liberia. Whereas most other African languages used letters from European or Semitic systems to record their speech, the Vai invented their own. Some credit a single genius, Momolu Duwalu Bukele, while others credit a small group, but the letters quickly spread among Vai speakers and are still commonly used today.
The Vai symbols in use today are not the same as those from our earliest records, which date back to 1834. (Although some think the language is decades older). “We believed it could tell us something essential about how writing changes over short periods of time because of its isolation and the way it has continued to develop up until the current day,” Kelly said. “We predicted…signs would be quite difficult at first but would grow simpler as new generations of authors and readers came along.”
This is exactly what Kelly and her co-authors discovered. The early Vai letters were influenced by ancient emblems meant to portray persons like a pregnant woman and a chained slave, according to legend. In an accelerated version of what we see with old languages, as generations learnt to draw them, they grew gradually simpler. “Visual complexity is advantageous when developing a new writing system.”You generate more clues and bigger contrasts between signs, which is beneficial to illiterate learners,” Kelly explained. “As time goes on, this complexity becomes a hindrance to effective reading and copying, and it fades away.”
“African indigenous scripts remain a massive, unexplored repository of semiotic and symbolic information,” said Nigerian scholar Henry Ibekwe in response to the study. There are still a lot of questions to be answered.” Kelly is currently researching how Indigenous Australian message sticks refute the concept that the continent lacked a written language before colonization.
