Baybayin
Baybayin is an old writing system that was used in the Philippines. It is an alphasyllabary belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. It was widely used in Luzon and other parts of the Philippines during the 16th and 17th centuries before being supplanted by the Latin alphabet. The characters are in the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode, proposed to be encoded in 1998 by Michael Everson together with three other known indigenous scripts of the Philippines. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Baybayin survived and evolved into the forms of Tagbanwa script of Palawan, Hanuno'o and Buhid scripts of Mindoro, and was used to create the modern Kulitan script of the Kapampangan, and Ibalnan script of the Palaw'an tribe.
The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the largest archives in the Philippines, currently possesses the world's biggest collection of ancient writings in Baybayin script. The chambers which house the writings are part of a tentative nomination to UNESCO World Heritage List that is still being deliberated on, along with the entire campus of the University of Santo Tomas.
In 2018, the Philippine House of Representatives approved Baybayin as the national writing system of the country. House Bill 1022 or the proposed "National Writing System Act" is authored by Rep. Leopoldo Bataoil. The measure seeks to declare Baybayin as the Philippines’ national writing system, generating greater awareness on the plight of Baybayin and foster wider appreciation on its importance and beauty. The bill declares there is a need to promote, protect, preserve and conserve "Baybayin" as the National Writing System of the Philippines, using it as a tool for cultural and economic development to create a consciousness, respect and pride for the legacies of Filipino cultural history, heritage and the country's authentic identity.
Overview
An alphasyllabary is one of the individual writing systems used in Southeast Asia, nearly all of which are abugidas; where any consonant is pronounced with the inherent vowel a following it—diacritics being used to express other vowels. Many of these writing systems descended from ancient writings used in India over 2000 years ago, and the collective term for the abugidas in the Philippines is Baybayin.Terminology
The term "baybayín" means "to write" or "to spell " in Tagalog. Published in 1613, San Buenaventura's Spanish-Tagalog dictionary's entry of "ABC's" was translated as "baibayin"The word "baybayin" refers to other indigenous writings in the Philippines that are Abugida, including Buhid script, Hanunó'o script, Tagbanwa script, Kulitan script, Tagalog script and others. Cultural organizations such as Sanghabi and the Heritage Conservation Society recommend that the collection of distinct scripts used by various indigenous groups in the Philippines, including baybayin, iniskaya, kirim jawi, and batang-arab be called suyat, which is a neutral term for any script. While Jay Enage and other new advocates recommend that the Abugida writing system or scripts in the Philippines will be called baybayin.
Baybayin is occasionally referred to as Alibata, a neologism coined by Paul Rodríguez Verzosa in 1914, after the first three letters of the Arabic script, presumably under the erroneous assumption that Baybayin is derived from the Arabic script.
In modern times, Baybayin has been called Badlit, Kudlit-kabadlit for the Visayans, Kurditan, Kur-itan for the Ilocanos, and Basahan for the Bicolanos.
Origins
The origins of Baybayin are disputed and multiple theories exist, as no definitive proof has been found yet.Influence of Greater India
Historically Southeast Asia was under the influence of Ancient India, where numerous Indianized principalities and empires flourished for several centuries in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. The influence of Indian culture into these areas was given the term Indianization. French archaeologist, George Coedes, defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations of royalty, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Sanskrit language. This can be seen in the Indianization of Southeast Asia, Hinduism in Southeast Asia and the spread of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Indian honorifics also influenced the Malay, Thai, Filipino and Indonesian honorifics. Examples of these include Raja, Rani, Maharlika, Datu, etc. which were transmitted from Indian culture to Philippines via Malays and the Srivijaya empire. Indian Hindu colonists played a key role as professionals, traders, priests and warriors. Inscriptions have proved that the earliest Indian colonists who settled in Champa and the Malay archipelago, came from the Pallava dynasty, as they brought with them their Pallava script. The earliest inscriptions in Java exactly match the Pallava script. In the first stage of adoption of Indian scripts, inscriptions were made locally in Indian languages. In the second stage, the scripts were used to write the local Southeast Asian languages. In the third stage, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century, the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.Isaac Taylor sought to show that Baybayin was introduced into the Philippines from the Coast of Bengal sometime before the 8th century. In attempting to show such a relationship, Taylor presented graphic representations of Kistna and Assam letters like g, k, ng, t, m, h, and u, which resemble the same letters in Baybayin. Fletcher Gardner argued that the Philippine scripts have "very great similarity" with the Brahmi script., which was supported by T. H. Pardo de Tavera. According to Christopher Miller, evidence seems strong for Baybayin to be ultimately of Gujarati origin, however Philippine and Gujarati languages have final consonants, so it is unlikely that their indication would have been dropped had Baybayin been based directly on a Gujarati model.
South Sulawesi scripts
, accepting the view that the scripts of the Malay archipelago originate in India, writes that the South Sulawesi scripts derive from the Kawi script, probably through the medium of the Batak script of Sumatra. The Philippine scripts, according to Diringer, were possibly brought to the Philippines through the Buginese characters in Sulawesi. According to Scott, Baybayin's immediate ancestor was very likely a South Sulawesi script, probably Old Makassar or a close ancestor. This is because of the lack of final consonants or vowel canceller markers in Baybayin. South Sulawesi languages have a restricted inventory of syllable-final consonants and do not represent them in the Bugis and Makassar scripts. The most likely explanation for the absence of final consonant markers in Baybayin is therefore that its direct ancestor was a South Sulawesi script. Sulawesi lies directly to the south of the Philippines and there is evidence of trade routes between the two. Baybayin must therefore have been developed in the Philippines in the fifteenth century CE as the Bugis-Makassar script was developed in South Sulawesi no earlier than 1400 CE.Kawi script
The Kawi script originated in Java, descending from the Pallava script, and was used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines. It is a legal document with the inscribed date of Saka era 822, corresponding to April 21, 900 AD. It was written in the Kawi script in a variety of Old Malay containing numerous loanwords from Sanskrit and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements whose origin is ambiguous between Old Javanese and Old Tagalog. A second example of Kawi script can be seen on the Butuan Ivory Seal, found in the 1970s and dated between the 9th and 12th century. It is an ancient seal made of ivory that was found in an archaeological site in Butuan. The seal has been declared as a National Cultural Treasure. The seal is inscribed with the word "Butwan" in stylized Kawi. The ivory seal is now housed at the National Museum of the Philippines. One hypothesis therefore reasons that, since Kawi is the earliest attestation of writing in the Philippines, then Baybayin may have descended from Kawi.Cham script
Baybayin could have been introduced to the Philippines by maritime connections with the Champa Kingdom. Geoff Wade has argued that the Baybayin characters "ga", "nga", "pa", "ma", "ya" and "sa" display characteristics that can be best explained by linking them to the Cham script, rather than other Indic abugidas. Baybayin seems to be more related to southeast Asian scripts than to Kawi script. Wade argues that the Laguna Copperplate Inscription is not definitive proof for a Kawi origin of Baybayin, as the inscription displays final consonants, which Baybayin does not.History
From the material that is available, it is clear that Baybayin was used in Luzon, Palawan, Mindoro, Pangasinan, Ilocos, Panay, Leyte and Iloilo, but there is no proof supporting that Baybayin reached Mindanao. It seems clear that the Luzon and Palawan varieties have started to develop in different ways in the 1500s, way before the Spaniards conquered what we know today as the Philippines. This puts Luzon and Palawan as the oldest regions where Baybayin was and is used. It is also notable that the script used in Pampanga had already developed special shapes for four letters by the early 1600s, different from the ones used elsewhere. There were three somewhat distinct varieties of Baybayin in the late 1500s and 1600s, though they could not be described as three different scripts any more than the different styles of Latin script across medieval or modern Europe with their slightly different sets of letters and spelling systems.In modern times, Baybayin has been called Badlit, Kudlit-kabadlit for the Visayans, Kurditan, Kur-itan for the Ilocanos, and Basahan for the Bicolanos.
| Script | Region | Sample |
| Baybayin | Tagalog region | |
| Sambal variety | Zambales | |
| Ilocano variety, Ilocano: "Kur-itan" | Ilocos | |
| Bicolano variety, Bicolano: "Iskriturang Basahan" | Bicol Region | |
| Pangasinense variety | Pangasinan | |
| Visayan variety, Visayan: "Badlit" | Visayas | |
| Kapampangan variety, Kapampangan: "Kulitan''" | Central Luzon |
Early history
An earthenware burial jar, called the "Calatagan Pot," found in Batangas is inscribed with characters strikingly similar to Baybayin, and is claimed to have been inscribed ca. 1300 AD. However, its authenticity has not yet been proven.Although one of Ferdinand Magellan's shipmates, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote that the people of the Visayas were not literate in 1521, the Baybayin had already arrived there by 1567 when Miguel López de Legazpi reported from Cebu that, "They have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them; they write them on bamboo bark and palm leaves with a pointed tool, but never is any ancient writing found among them nor word of their origin and arrival in these islands, their customs and rites being preserved by traditions handed down from father to son without any other record." A century later, in 1668 Francisco Alcina wrote: "The characters of these natives , or, better said, those that have been in use for a few years in these parts, an art which was communicated to them from the Tagalogs, and the latter learned it from the Borneans who came from the great island of Borneo to Manila, with whom they have considerable traffic... From these Borneans the Tagalogs learned their characters, and from them the Visayans, so they call them Moro characters or letters because the Moros taught them... learned letters, which many use today, and the women much more than the men, which they write and read more readily than the latter." Francisco de Santa Inés explained in 1676 why writing Baybayin was more common among women, as "they do not have any other way to while away the time, for it is not customary for little girls to go to school as boys do, they make better use of their characters than men, and they use them in things of devotion, and in other things that are not of devotion."
The earliest printed book in a Philippine language, featuring both Tagalog in Baybayin and transliterated into Latin script, is the 1593 Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala. The Tagalog text was based mainly on a manuscript written by Fr. Juan de Placencia. Friars Domingo de Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr supervised the preparation and printing of the book, which was carried out by an unnamed Chinese artisan. This is the earliest example of Baybayin that exists today and it is the only example from the 1500s. There is also a series of legal documents containing Baybayin, preserved in Spanish and Philippine archives that span more than a century: the three oldest, all in the Archivo General de Índias in Seville, are from 1591 and 1599.
Baybayin was noted by the Spanish priest Pedro Chirino in 1604 and Antonio de Morga in 1609 to be known by most Filipinos, and was generally used for personal writings, poetry, etc. However, according to William Henry Scott, there were some datus from the 1590s who could not sign affidavits or oaths, and witnesses who could not sign land deeds in the 1620s.
In 1620, Libro a naisurátan amin ti bagás ti Doctrina Cristiana was written by Fr. Francisco Lopez, an Ilokano Doctrina the first Ilokano Baybayin, based on the catechism written by Cardinal Belarmine. This is an important moment in the history of Baybayin, because the krus-kudlít was introduced for the first time, which allowed for unvoiced consonants. He commented the following on his decision: "The reason for putting the text of the Doctrina in Tagalog type... has been to begin the correction of the said Tagalog script, which, as it is, is so defective and confused that the most learned reader has to stop and ponder over many words to decide on the pronunciation which the writer intended." This krus-kudlit, or virama kudlit, did not catch on among Baybayin users, however. Native Baybayin experts were consulted about the new invention and were asked to adopt it and use it in all their writings. After praising the invention and showing gratitude for it, they decided that it could not be accepted into their writing because "It went against the intrinsic properties and nature that God had given their writing and that to use it was tantamount to destroy with one blow all the Syntax, Prosody and Orthography of their Tagalog language."
In 1703, Baybayin was reported to still be used in the Comintan and other areas of the Philippines.
Among the earliest literature on the orthography of Visayan languages were those of Jesuit priest Ezguerra with his Arte de la lengua bisaya in 1747 and of Mentrida with his Arte de la lengua bisaya:
The Ticao stone inscription, also known as the Monreal stone or Rizal stone, is a limestone tablet that contains Baybayin characters. Found by pupils of Rizal Elementary School on Ticao Island in Monreal town, Masbate, which had scraped the mud off their shoes and slippers on two irregular shaped limestone tablets before entering their classroom, they are now housed at a section of the National Museum of the Philippines, which weighs 30 kilos, is 11 centimeters thick, 54 cm long and 44 cm wide while the other is 6 cm thick, 20 cm long and 18 cm wide.
Decline
The confusion over vowels and final consonants, missing letters for Spanish sounds and the prestige of Spanish culture and writing may have contributed to the demise of Baybayin over time, as eventually Baybayin fell out of use in much of the Philippines. Learning the Latin alphabet also helped Filipinos to make socioeconomic progress under Spanish rule, as they could rise to relatively prestigious positions such as clerks, scribes and secretaries. By 1745, wrote in his Arte de la lengua tagala that “The Indian who knows how to read is now rare, and rarer still is one who knows how to write . They now all read and write in our Castilian letters .” Between 1751 and 1754, Juan José Delgado wrote that "the men devoted themselves to the use of our writing".The complete absence of pre-Hispanic specimens of usage of the Baybayin script has led to a common misconception that fanatical Spanish priests must have burned or destroyed massive amounts of native documents. One of the scholars who proposed this theory is the anthropologist and historian H. Otley Beyer who wrote in "The Philippines before Magellan" that, "one Spanish priest in Southern Luzon boasted of having destroyed more than three hundred scrolls written in the native character". Historians have searched for the source of Beyer's claim, but no one has verified the name of the said priest. There is no direct documentary evidence of substantial destruction of native pre-Hispanic documents by Spanish missionaries and modern scholars such as Paul Morrow and Hector Santos accordingly rejected Beyer's suggestions. In particular, the scholar Santos suggested that only the occasional short documents of incantations, curses and spells that were deemed evil were possibly burned by the Spanish friars, and that the early missionaries only carried out the destruction of Christian manuscripts that were not acceptable to the Church. Santos rejected the idea that ancient pre-Hispanic manuscripts were systematically burned. The scholar Morrow also noted that there are no recorded instances of ancient Filipinos writing on scrolls, and that the most likely reason why no pre-Hispanic documents survived is because they wrote on perishable materials such as leaves and bamboo. He also added that it is also arguable that Spanish friars actually helped to preserve Baybayin by documenting and continuing its use even after it had been abandoned by most Filipinos.
The scholar Isaac Donoso claims that the documents written in the native language and in the native script played a significant role in the judicial and legal life of the colony and noted that many colonial-era documents written in Baybayin are still present in some repositories, including the library of the University of Santo Tomas. He also noted that the early Spanish missionaries did not suppress the usage of the Baybayin script but instead they may have even promoted the Baybayin script as a measure to stop Islamization, since the Tagalog language was moving from Baybayin to Jawi, the Arabized script of Islamized Southeast Asian societies.
While there were recorded at least two records of burning of Tagalog booklets of magic formulae during the early Spanish colonial period, scholar Jean Paul-Potet also commented that these booklets were written in Latin characters and not in the native Baybayin script. There are also no reports of Tagalog written scriptures, as they kept their theological knowledge unwritten and in oral form while reserving the use of the Baybayin script for secular purposes and talismans.
Modern descendants
The only surviving modern scripts that descended directly from the original Baybayin script through natural development are the Tagbanwa script inherited from the Tagbanwa people by the Palawan people and named Ibalnan, the Buhid script and the Hanunóo script in Mindoro. The ancient Kapampangan script used in the 1600s has been supplanted by a constructed script called "modern Kulitan". There is no evidence for any other regional scripts; like the modern Kulitan experiment in Pampanga. Any other scripts are recent inventions based on one or another of the abecedaries from old Spanish descriptions.| Script | Region | Sample |
| Ibalnan script | Palawan | |
| Hanunó'o script | Mindoro | |
| Buhid script | Mindoro | |
| Tagbanwa script | Central and Northern Palawan |
Characteristics
Baybayin is an Abugida, which means that it makes use of consonant-vowel combinations. Each character or titík, written in its basic form, is a consonant ending with the vowel "A". To produce consonants ending with other vowel sounds, a mark called a kudlit is placed either above the character or below the character. To write words beginning with a vowel, three characters are used, one each for A, E/I and O/U.Characters
Note that the second to last row features the pamudpod virama " ᜴", which was introduced by Antoon Postma to the Hanunuo script. The last row of clusters with the krus-kudlit virama "+", were an addition to the original script, introduced by the Spanish priest Francisco Lopez in 1620.There is only one symbol or character for Da or Ra as they were allophones in many languages of the Philippines, where Ra occurred in intervocalic positions and Da occurred elsewhere. The grammatical rule has survived in modern Filipino, so that when a d is between two vowels, it becomes an r, as in the words dangál and marangál, or dunong and marunong, and even raw for daw and rin for din after vowels. However, Baybayin script variants like Sambal, Basahan, and Ibalnan ;to name a few, have separate symbols for Da and Ra.
The same symbol is also used to represent the Pa and Fa, Ba and Va, and Sa and Za which were also allophonic. A single character represented nga. The current version of the Filipino alphabet still retains "ng" as a digraph. Beside these phonetic considerations, the script is monocameral and does not use letter case for distinguishing proper names or initials of words starting sentences.
Virama Kudlit
The original writing method was particularly difficult for the Spanish priests who were translating books into the vernaculars, because originally Baybayin omitted the final consonant without a vowel. This could cause confusion for readers over which word or pronunciation a writer originally intended. For example, 'bundok' would have been spelled as 'bu-du', with the final consonants of each syllable omitted. Because of this, Francisco López introduced his own kudlit in 1620, called a sabat or krus, that cancelled the implicit a vowel sound and which allowed a final consonant to be written. 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.Punctuation and spacing
Baybayin originally used only one punctuation mark, which was called Bantasán. Today Baybayin uses two punctuation marks, the Philippine single punctuation, acting as a comma or verse splitter in poetry, and the double punctuation, acting as a period or end of paragraph. These punctuation marks are similar to single and double danda signs in other Indic Abugidas and may be presented vertically like Indic dandas, or slanted like forward slashes. The signs are unified across Philippines scripts and were encoded by Unicode in the Hanunóo script block. Space separation of words was historically not used as words were written in a continuous flow, but is common today.Collation
- In the Doctrina Christiana, the letters of Baybayin were collated as:
- : A, U/O, I/E; Ha, Pa, Ka, Sa, La, Ta, Na, Ba, Ma, Ga, Da/Ra, Ya, NGa, Wa.
- In Unicode the letters are collated in coherence with other Indic scripts, by phonetic proximity for consonants:
- : A, I/E, U/O; Ka, Ga, Nga; Ta, Da/Ra, Na; Pa, Ba, Ma; Ya, La, Wa, Sa, Ha.
Usage
Pre-colonial and colonial usage
Baybayin historically was used in Tagalog and to a lesser extent Kapampangan speaking areas. Its use spread to Ilokanos when the Spanish promoted its use with the printing of Bibles. Baybayin was noted by the Spanish priest Pedro Chirino in 1604 and Antonio de Morga in 1609 to be known by most Filipinos, stating that there is hardly a man and much less a woman, who does not read and write in the letters used in the "island of Manila". It was noted that they did not write books or keep records, but used Baybayin for personal writings like small notes and messages, poetry and signing documents.Traditionally, Baybayin was written upon palm leaves with styli or upon bamboo with knives, the writing tools were called panulat. The curved shape of the letter forms of Baybayin is a direct result of this heritage; straight lines would have torn the leaves. Once the letters were carved into the bamboo, it was wiped with ash to make the characters stand out more. An anonymous source from 1590 states:
During the era of Spanish colonization, most Baybayin began being written with ink on paper or printed in books to facilitate the spread of Christianity. In some parts of the country like Mindoro the traditional writing technique has been retained. Filipinos began keeping paper records of their property and financial transactions, and would write down lessons they were taught in church, all in Baybayin. The scholar Isaac Donoso claims that the documents written in the native language and in Baybayin played a significant role in the judicial and legal life of the colony. The University of Santo Tomas Baybayin Documents cover two legal real estate transactions in 1613, written in Baybayin, and 1625
Modern Usage
A number of legislative bills have been proposed periodically aiming to promote the writing system, among them is the "National Writing System Act". It is used in the most current New Generation Currency series of the Philippine peso issued in the last quarter of 2010. The word used on the bills was "Pilipino".It is also used in Philippine passports, specifically the latest e-passport edition issued 11 August 2009 onwards. The odd pages of pages 3–43 have "" in reference to Proverbs 14:34.
Examples
The Lord's Prayer (''Ama Namin'')
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Motto of the Philippines
Example sentences
- : Yamang ‘di nagkakaunawaan, ay mag-pakahinahon.
- : Remain calm in disagreements.
- : Magtanim ay 'di birò.
- : Planting is not a joke.
- : Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan
- : The youth is the hope of the country
- :Mámahalin kitá hanggáng sa pumutí ang buhók ko.
- : I will love you until my hair turns white.
Unicode
Block
Baybayin is included in Unicode under the name 'Tagalog'.Baybayin-Tagalog Unicode range: U+1700–U+171F
Keyboard
Gboard
The virtual keyboard app Gboard developed by Google for Android and iOS devices was updated on August 1, 2019 its list of supported languages. This includes all Unicode Baybayin blocks namely: Baybayin-Buhid as "Buhid", Baybayin-Hanunoó as "Hanunuo", Baybayin-Tagalog as "Filipino, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa as "Aborlan". The Baybayin-Tagalog keyboard layout was intuitively designed when pressing the character, vowel markers for e/i and o/u, as well as the virama are shown in the middle of the keyboard layout.Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout with Baybayin
It is possible to type Baybayin directly from the keyboard without the need to use online typepads. The Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout includes different sets of Baybayin layout for different keyboard users: QWERTY, Capewell-Dvorak, Capewell-QWERF 2006, Colemak, and Dvorak, all available in Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux 32-bit and 64-bit installations.The keyboard layout with Baybayin can be downloaded at .
Font downloads
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