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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the Origins of the Vai Script
Authors:Tuchscherer, KonradISNI
Hair, P.E.H.ISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:History in Africa
Volume:29
Pages:427-486
Language:English
Geographic terms:Sierra Leone
Liberia
Subjects:writing systems
Vai
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Bibliography/Research
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172173
Abstract:For over a hundred and fifty years, students of the history of writing and the development of scripts have been intrigued by the modern inventions of the Cherokee script, devised 1821, and the Vai script, (Liberia, Sierra Leone) devised 1832/33, these being the earliest script inventions in North America and sub-Saharan Africa respectively. The two scripts have often been cited in parallel as examples of 'independent inventions among natives.' True, the chronology of the inventions is curiously quasi-coincidental, the dates being little more than a decade apart, while the scripts share the same orthographic organization, both being syllabaries. But the similarities end there. The outward forms of characters share almost no graphic similarity. Observation of this simple fact, allied with the appreciation of the considerable geographical distance separating the Cherokee people of North America from the Vai people of West Africa, inhibited earlier commentators from giving thought to any degree of interdependence of the two inventions. In 1967, however, the attention of interested scholars was captured by the suggestion of a historical connection between the two scripts. In that year two separate arguments for such a link were introduced, independently, by two scholars (P.E.H. Hair and Svend Holsoe) unaware of each other's work. This article examines the origin of the Vai script and discusses the hypothesis of a Cherokee-Vai scripts connection. Notes, ref.
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