Unicode Block - Bassa Vah

Bassa Vah is a script used historically for the Bassa language of Liberia, and its encoded characters preserve a writing system that was developed in the early 20th century but fell into disuse by the mid-1900s. The repertoire includes 36 letters, a set of digits, and various punctuation marks, all designed to represent the language’s phonetic inventory with a distinctive, geometric style. Unlike many African scripts that derived from Latin or Arabic models, Bassa Vah is an indigenous creation, and its inclusion in digital standards helps support ongoing cultural revival and linguistic documentation efforts. The script’s characters are arranged in a logical, syllabary-like structure, though it functions as an alphabet, and its encoding enables modern text processing for a language that once risked being lost entirely.