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Bassa

bsq

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The Bassa language is a Kru language spoken by about 350,000 people in Liberia and 5,000 in Sierra Leone by Bassa people. It has an indigenous script, Vah, developed before 1907 by Thomas Narvin Lewis (c.1880-?) while he was studying at Syracuse University in the United States. The first primer was printed by Lyman Brothers circa 1907. Dr. Lewis returned to Liberia where he began teaching his script to Bassa children. The language was taught in some of the Poro society schools. The script has been described as one which, like the system long in use among the Vai, consists of a series of phonetic characters standing for syllables. In fact, however, the Vah script is alphabetic. It includes 30 consonants, seven vowels, and five tones that are indicated by dots and lines inside of each vowel. In the 1970s the United Bible Societies (UBS) published a translation of the New Testament. June Hobley, of Liberia Inland Mission, was primarily responsible for the translation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was used for this translation rather than the Vah script, mostly for practical reasons related to printing. Because the Bassa people had a tradition of writing, they quickly adapted to the new script, and thousands learned to read. In 2005, UBS published the entire Bible in Bassa. The translation was sponsored by the Christian Education Foundation of Liberia, Christian Reformed World Missions, and UBS. Don Slager headed a team of translators that included Seokin Payne, Robert Glaybo, and William Boen. The IPA has largely replaced the Vah script in publications. However, the Vah script is still highly respected and is still in use by some older men, primarily for record keeping.
Source : DBpedia

Names (more)

[de] Bassa
[en] Bassa language
[fr] Bassa
[hr] Bassa jezik
[ru] Басса
[es] Idioma bassa

Language type : Living

Language resources for Bassa

Open Languages Archives


Wiktionary - Category:Bassa language [en]

Technical notes

This page is providing structured data for the language Bassa.
Following BCP 47 the recommended tag for this language is bsq.

This page is marked up using RDFa, schema.org, and other linked open vocabularies. The raw RDF data can be extracted using the W3C RDFa Distiller.

Freebase search uses the Freebase API, based on ISO 639-3 codes shared by Freebase language records.

ISO 639 Codes

ISO 639-3 : bsq

Linked Data URIs

http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/bsq
http://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:bsq

More URIs at sameas.org

Sources

Authority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: bsq

Freebase ISO 639-3 : bsq
GeoNames.org Country Information

Publications Office of the European Union
Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages