Theodore Discovers the Bassa Vah Alphabet

Theodore the turtle was exploring a library when he came across a fascinating book about writing systems. He learned about a special alphabet called Bassa Vah used to write the Bassa language in Liberia.

The Bassa Vah alphabet has 23 consonant letters and 7 vowel letters. Theodore thought that was a lot to remember! He was amazed to find out it also uses 5 different marks to show the tone of words.

Theodore discovered that Bassa Vah is written from left to right, just like English. But unlike English, it uses special symbols instead of the ABCs we know.

The book explained that Bassa Vah was created a long time ago, but almost disappeared in the 1900s. Luckily, some people found it again in Brazil and the West Indies. A man named Thomas Flo Lewis helped bring it back to Liberia.

Theodore learned that in 1959, people in Liberia started an association to promote Bassa Vah. They even made special typewriters to print it!

Although not many people use Bassa Vah today, Theodore thought it was important to learn about different writing systems from around the world. He was glad the alphabet was added to Unicode in 2014 so it could be used on computers.

Theodore closed the book, feeling excited about all the interesting alphabets waiting to be discovered. He couldn't wait to learn about more writing systems on his next library adventure!