☭What is Baybayín?
Baybayin is an indic writing system used by some of the people within pre-colonial and early colonial Philippines. Generally speaking, it was used in the Visayas, in Southern and Central Luzon, and in Palawan.
It is an Abugida (also known as an Alphasyllabary). That is to say, every character in Baybayin represents a syllable, rather than a letter or a phoneme.
It is quite easy to learn, so long as you keep in mind some basic rules.
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☭How do I read and write in Baybayín?
Before you can begin to read and write in Baybayin, it is fundamental that you keep in mind that Baybayin is completely separate from the Latin Alphabet. I will be representing Baybayin letters through their latin equivalents, but keep in mind that I am representing sounds, not letters.
Another thing you must keep in mind is that, as I had mentioned before, these characters represent syllables, rather than letters or individual sounds.
And lastly, there are only three vowels in Baybayin. "a" is directly equivalent to the latin letter "a", while "i" is equivalent to "i" and "e". "u" is, likewise, equivalent to "u" and "o".
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☭☭Characters
There are a total of 18 characters, and about three kudlit.
The 18 characters are composed of 3 vowel characters and 15 consonant characters
The kudlit are composed of the 2 vowel-changing diacritics and the vowel killer, which itself has two different forms.
| Character | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᜀ | ᜁ | ᜂ | ᜑ | ᜃ | ᜄ | ᜅ | ᜐ | ᜆ |
| a | i | u | ha | ka | ga | nga | sa | ta |
| ᜇ | ᜈ | ᜉ | ᜊ | ᜋ | ᜌ | ᜍ | ᜎ | ᜏ |
| da | na | pa | ba | ma | ya | ra | la | wa |
| Kudlit | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌ᜒ | ◌ᜓ | ◌᜕ | ◌᜔ |
| -i | -u | vowel killer | |
☭☭Rules
Characters
The vowel characters ᜀᜁ and ᜂ represent the sounds for "a", "i/e", and "u/o" when they are present in a word without a preceeding vowel. Consider words like ambot, útang, and ísaw, as well as buák, máot, and paít.
In Baybayin, these would be written ᜀᜋ᜕ᜊᜓᜆ᜕,☭ᜂᜆᜅ᜕,☭ᜁᜐᜏ᜕,☭ᜊᜓᜀᜃ᜕,☭ᜋᜂᜆ᜕,☭ᜉᜁᜆ᜕.
The consonant characters, on the other hand, represent consonants followed by the vowel "a". In the chart above, for example, you might notice that there are a lot of characters like "ka", "ga", "nga", but no characters like "ku" and "si" or even "k".
Kudlit
This is because if you want to form those syllables, you'll have to use kudlit!
Kudlit are marks that you put on a consonant character to mess around with its default vowel. If you want to change a character's vowel to "I", you'll have to put a dot above the character. To change the vowel to "u", you put the dot below instead.
Thus, ᜃ "ka" with a dot above becomes ᜃᜒ "ki", and ᜊ "ba" with a dot below becomes ᜊᜓ "bu"
But of course, our Philippine languages are full of final consonants—consonants that are not followed by a vowel. For these you use the final kudlit—the virama or vowel killer.
The virama comes in two forms. The first ◌᜕ is called the pamudpod, and it was adopted from the Hanunuo Mangyan of Mindoro. The second ◌᜔ is the krus-kudlit, and it was introduced by a Spanish Friar. Both do the same function and are interchangeable; whichever one you use depends entirely on personal preference.
For example, ᜊᜎᜒᜃ᜕ ᜊᜎᜅᜒᜆ᜕ and ᜊᜎᜒᜃ᜔ ᜊᜎᜅᜒᜆ᜔ are both exactly the same, and they're both correct. They both read "Balik Langit".
Last Pointers
Now you know all you need to know to start writing and reading in Baybayin! Wasn't that quite easy?
Just remember to write based on what you're saying, and not on how you'd spell it in the Latin Alphabet. You write Quezon, Fuentes, and Argao as ᜃᜒᜐᜓᜈ᜕ "kisun", ᜉ᜕ᜏᜒᜈ᜕ᜆᜒᜐ᜕ "pwintis", and ᜀᜍ᜕ᜄᜏ᜕ "argaw", NOT ᜃᜓᜁᜐᜓᜈ᜕"kuisun", ᜉᜓᜁᜈ᜕ᜆᜒᜐ᜕ "puintis", and ᜀᜍ᜕ᜄᜂ "argau"