In 1921, Kisimi Kamara invented a syllabary for Mende he called Kikakui (). The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an alphabet based on the Latin script, and the Mende script is considered a "failed script".[6] The Bible was translated into Mende and published in 1959, in Latin script.
^Crosby, Kenneth. 1944. An Introduction to the Study of Mende. Cambridge University Press.
^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.