Kpelle syllabary
| Kpelle | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | syllabary
|
Period | 1935–? |
| Direction | Left-to-right  |
| Languages | Kpelle language |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Kpel (436), Kpelle |
The Kpelle syllabary was invented c. 1935 by Chief Gbili of Sanoyie, Liberia. It was intended for writing the Kpelle language, a member of the Mande group of Niger-Congo languages spoken by about 490,000 people in Liberia and around 300,000 people in Guinea at that time.[1]
According to Omniglot, the syllabary consists of 88 graphemes.[1] The Unicode proposal consists 106 non-numerical symbols.[2] The script is written from left-to-right in horizontal rows. Many of the character have allographs.
The script has 10 known numerals, they go from one to ten, there is no known character for zero.[2]
It was used to some extent by speakers of the Kpelle language in Liberia and Guinea during the 1930s and early 1940s but never achieved popular acceptance.[1] It has been classed as a failed script.[3]
Today Kpelle is written with a version of the Latin alphabet.
References
- ^ a b c "Kpelle syllabary". Omniglot.com. Retrieved 2012-01-31.
- ^ a b Michael Everson and Charles Riley (2010-02-23). “N3762: Preliminary proposal for encoding the Kpelle script in the SMP of the UCS” Retrieved 10 April 2026.
- ^ Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization. In The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García, pp. 23-32. New York: Oxford University Press.