Everything about Baybayin totally explained
Baybayin or
Alibata (known in
Unicode as the
Tagalog script) is a pre-
Spanish Philippine writing system that originated from the
Javanese script
Old Kawi. The writing system is a member of the
Brahmic family (and an offshoot of the
Vatteluttu alphabet) and is believed to be in use as early as the 14th century. It continued to be in use during the Spanish colonization of the
Philippines up until the late 19th Century. The term
baybayin literally means
syllables. Closely related scripts are
Hanunóo,
Buhid, and
Tagbanwa.
Usage
The writing system is an
abugida system using consonant-vowel combinations. Each character, written in its basic form, is a consonant ending with the vowel "A". To produce consonants ending with the other vowel sounds, a mark is placed either above the consonant (to produce an "E" or "I" sound) or below the consonant (to produce an "O" or "U" sound). The mark is called a
kudlit. The kudlit doesn't apply to stand-alone vowels. Vowels themselves have their own glyphs. There is only one symbol for
D or
R as they were allophones in most
languages of the Philippines, wherein
D fell in initial, final, pre-consonantal or post-consonatal positions and
R in intervocalic positions.
In its original form however, a stand-alone consonant (consonants not ending with any vowel sound) can't be produced, in which case these were simply not written and the reader would fill in the missing consonants through context. This method, however, was particularly hard for the Spanish priests who were translating books into the native language. Because of this Father Francisco Lopez introduced his own kudlit in
1620 that eliminated the vowel sound. The kudlit was in the form of a "+" sign, in reference to
Christianity. This cross-shaped kudlit functions exactly the same as the
virama in the
Devanagari script of
India. In fact, Unicode calls this kudlit the
Tagalog Sign Virama.
Characters in Base form
Unicode
The
Unicode range for Babayin is U+1700–U+171F, where it's called Tagalog. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Baybayin'.
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