WHAT IS BAYBAYIN ?

Baybayin is the writing system of the Filipinos before the Spanish colonizers introduced the Latin/ Roman Alphabet.

It is an Abugida, a writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a single unit or character.

Unlike the Roman alphabet that requires you to write letters to form the word, Baybayin uses characters that are equivalent to a syllable.

Whereas the English Roman Alphabet has 26 letters, while the Spanish Roman Alphabet has 27 letters, Baybayin only has 17 characters.

The 17 characters of Baybayin are comprised of 3 vowels, A, E or I, and O or U*, and 14 consonants with the vowel sound "a".



The 14 consonants are Ba, Da, Ga, Ha, La, Ma, Na, NGa, Pa, Sa, Ta, Wa, and Ya*



To write Ra, most often you will use the character that stands for Da, though there are also instances that La is being used.

If you need to write a syllable that ends with an E or I sound, you just need to put a "Kudlit", a small marker, on top of the character. A Kudlit could either be a dot, a small circle, or something that resembles an apostrophe.

Hence, the Ba character with a kudlit above would then be pronounced as Be/Bi and no longer Ba.



To write down a syllable that ends with either O or U, the kudlit would then be placed below the character.

Thus, the Ba character with a kudlit below would be read as Bo, and no longer Ba.



If you need to write a consonant sound without an accompanying vowel sound, such as the "T" in "sulat", you simply need to disregard it.

This makes "Sulat" written as "Su la" only.





This method of writing might confuse especially those who are not used to it, as written words can be read differently.

As an example, to write "Bunso", which means the youngest sibling, you just need to write "BuSo", as the "n" will be omitted because it does not have a vowel sound.

Thus, "BuSo" could also be read as "busoG", or full; or maybe "Buso", which is a malevolent spirit.

Because this form of writing relies on contextual clues, a Spanish friar who studied this script decided to introduce a small marker, in the form of a cross that would be placed at the bottom of the character. This new marker would cancel the vowel sound of the character, allowing people to write each sound of the word for better clarity.

Moving forward, Sulat can now be written as "Sulat" and not simply "SuLa".





*(.The arrangements of characters are based on the Latin/Roman Alphabet, to make it easier for people unfamiliar with Baybayin to relate)






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