Re: Bassa Script

From: Christopher Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Fri Nov 07 2008 - 04:11:24 CST

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    The script apparently consists of twenty-three consonants, seven
    vowels, and five tones indicated by combining marks which occur
    inside vowels, as well as a few punctuation marks.

    Micheal Everson's draft chart
    <http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/bassa.pdf>
    does not differentiate between consonants and vowels and shows the
    script as single case. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bassa.htm>
    and <http://www.uniboa.org/bassalanguage.html> shows the script as cased.

    This appears to be the only alphabetic African script.

    - Chris

    Links

    Bassa:
    <http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/USR.html#n011>
    A brief summary of Liberian Indigenous scripts:
    <http://cefliberia.org/extras/IndigenousScripts.pdf>
    Written Bassa:
    <http://www.cefliberia.org/bassa.htm>
    United Bassa Organizations: The Bassa Language
    <http://www.uniboa.org/bassalanguage.html>
    Omniglot page:
    <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bassa.htm>
    African Writing Systems:
    <http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Welcome.html>
    Font (Jason Glavy):
    <http://www.geocities.com/jglavy/fontsnstuff/bassa.zip>
    Xenotype "Language Kit":
    <http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxBassa.html>
    <http://www.xenotypetech.com/samplepdfs/BS_Sample.pdf>
    Bassa Alphabet
    <http://tinyurl.com/bassa-script>

    vunzndi@vfemail.net wrote:
    > Quoting "António MARTINS-Tuválkin" <antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt>:
    >>> From: Ben J. Bloomgren <ben.j.bloomgren@gmail.com>
    >>> To: António MARTINS-Tuválkin <antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt>
    >>> Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 1:31:10 PM
    >>> Subject: First post and question about Bassa Script
    >> ===8<==============Original message text===============
    >> Hello all,
    >>
    >> This is my first post to this list, and I had a question:
    >>
    >> Is the Bassa Vah script at all in Unicode? If so, how are the tones
    >> indicated being that they are marked inside a given vowel grapheme.
    >> I'm not a technical person, so I'm just curious.
    >>
    >
    > It would appear not Micheal (Everson) did produce something about this
    > see http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/bassa.pdf .
    >
    > Technically it is not too difficult to produce a font to do this.
    >
    > Some others might have a better idea why this has not progress any
    > further so far.
    >
    >
    >
    > Regards
    > John Knightley
    >
    >> Sincerely,
    >>
    >> Ben J. Bloomgren
    >>

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