Baybayin: Ancient Filipino Writing System

[Manila-X]

Baybayin is the alphabet system of The Philippines during pre-hispanic times. The system originated from the Javanese script of Old Kawi and is a member of the Brahmic family which includes The Burmese abugida, Tamil and Malayalam. Unfortunately, the use of alibata was discouraged by The Spaniards and was in fact prohibited. The Filipino language was later romanized and still used this form today.



The alphabet system varies from one dialect to the other though the Tagalog system is the most common. Each alphabet resembles the modern romanization though some words interact.

But the younger generation of Filipinos are rediscovering Alibata and is also popular in today's subculture.

Usage of alibata in today's culture

T-shirt


Tattoo


Graffiti (infusing alibata characters with wildstyle)
image hosted on flickr

[le Reine]

nice thread. I still use alibata when I cumminicate with my friends.

[urban Iegend]

Originally Posted by WANCH

Graffiti (infusing alibata characters with wildstyle)
image hosted on flickr

(sorry for being OT) does anyone know who or what this "ungga" is?
nagkakalat mga yan (graffiti) sa tacloban

[Manila-X]

Originally Posted by urban Iegend

(sorry for being OT) does anyone know who or what this "ungga" is?
nagkakalat mga yan (graffiti) sa tacloban

Here's a street artist from Manila. But he does some characters using aerosol. This is their website

http://pilipinastreetplan.blogspot.com

[c0kelitr0]

i used to write my journal in alibata i have studied it extensively before. it's easy to write but hard to read hehe.

[Louman]

Anyone here got the alibata fonts? let's see how far we can go writing using the fonts from Paul Morrow's alibata website.

The following uses the Tagalog Doctrina font:

Als+ dusi nN+ Umg at+ gisiN+ p rin+ aku. guwhhhhhhhhhhhh

[le Reine]

I do have my own way of writing the alibata though. Way different from the original. I still find it hard to write based on syllables/sounds rather than by letters. I guess the romanticized alphabet is hard to dismiss.

[Culiat]

I have been writing my journals in Alibata or Baybayin as it should be called for many years now. Along with this Baybayin script of the Tagalogs I also write in the Pamagkulit script of the Kapampangans.

It is technically not an alphabet but an abugida or a segmental type of writing system

[Louman]

any font downloads for the Pamagkulit script?

[kiretoce]

Imagine if Alibata was widely practiced today and have not been nearly extinct, I wonder what our local signages would look like? Like street signs, signs in public places (rail stations, airports, malls, etc.), or in books and other media.

[le Reine]

Originally Posted by kiretoce

Imagine if Alibata was widely practiced today and have not been nearly extinct, I wonder what our local signages would look like? Like street signs, signs in public places (rail stations, airports, malls, etc.), or in books and other media.

Maybe it would be the same as Bangkok.

[kiretoce]

Thanks Chris! Yeah, it does resemble the Thai script. Hmm....maybe they should reintroduce that in the schools and have the new generation of Filipinos learn and be prolific and competent at it.

But then again, Alibata is written based on the Tagalog language (grammar and syntax), but with the proliferation of Taglish, and other hybrid/made-up languages, Alibata may not be as applicable as once thought possible.

[flymordecai]

Perhaps Alibata should be brought back just to curb the influence of English on our dialects and rid this world of Taglish.

But seriously, I don't think we should go back to writing in Alibata because of the difficulty of introducing it back. Although it would have been really cool if we had never stopped using this script.

[Louman]

Originally Posted by marieantoinette

I do have my own way of writing the alibata though. Way different from the original. I still find it hard to write based on syllables/sounds rather than by letters. I guess the romanticized alphabet is hard to dismiss.

If you think Alibata is hard, Japanese kana is way harder. Instead of 19 syllabic letters, you have 50+. woo hoo!

If Alibata were to be introduced, it would be hard and expensive to train teachers on the alphabet. Perhaps it would be better when the country has more money allocated for education. However, I think it would be a good idea to have Alibata to be used for writing Filipino languages since it forces you to use Filipino words instead of resorting to something like Kris Aquino Taglish. Maybe it could be used in advanced level writing classes for writing poetry or something like that.

kiretoce: Philippine orthography is actually based on the alibata alphabet, well, at least according to the guy who made the Alibata fonts.

The Tagalog language has no exclusivity with Alibata since the alphabet (with some variation in style/design) was used almost everywhere in the Philippines except by Igorots, Lumads, Aeta, and Moros. Out of all the variations, the Visayan variation (dunno which parts of the Visayas used this one tho) looks the most different out of all the Alibata alphabets.

[kiretoce]

Interesting! Thanks for the info Lou.

[Culiat]

Originally Posted by Louman

any font downloads for the Pamagkulit script?

none that I'm aware of

[Louman]

Originally Posted by kiretoce

Interesting! Thanks for the info Lou.

So pretty much the closest thing we have to the Alibata is how Filipino words are spelled since there's no C or Q letters in the Alibata alphabet. They're both represented as K or S.

[Manila-X]

Originally Posted by kiretoce

Imagine if Alibata was widely practiced today and have not been nearly extinct, I wonder what our local signages would look like? Like street signs, signs in public places (rail stations, airports, malls, etc.), or in books and other media.

The best way to do that if it happens is for the Department of Education to teach it in schools and force a new cultural revolution. Both Filipino and English should be emphasized but alibata is used for Filipino. Other than that is to modify and expand the alibata sytem.

Anyway, the romanization of local dialects isn't just limited in The Philippines but also the Malay countries like Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and to some extent, Singapore. These countries have romanized the Malay language

[le Reine]

Well, learning Alibata is not actually hard. I just knew about it when I was in my first year HS. I used alibata in communicating with my best friends since that day.

[overtureph]

Arts and Culture
The Chinese Treasure Fleet in 15th century Philippines
By Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil
Monday, May 19, 2008

It was the people of our archipelago who discovered Magellan and the Europeans in 1521, not the other way around, as most Filipinos were taught by our grade-school textbooks. Our islands and their inhabitants were well-known to a larger, richer world that of Chinese emperors and scholars and Arab traders, as early as the 9th, even 6th centuries. And certainly by 1000 A.D., our shores were regular ports of call in the trade with China, then the most powerful nation on earth.

Chinese chronicles, European archaeologists and the diggings in our pre-colonial burial grounds prove that those ancient Filipinos used fine porcelain, weights and measures imported from China, and recorded written contracts. Chao-Ju-Kua reported that Chinese traders visited Ma-I (Luzon) regularly, leaving silks, porcelain and metal utensils on the beaches of designated islands, and returning weeks later to collect payment in the form of beeswax, gold dust, carabao horn, ginger, cinnamon or garlic. It was an import-export system run on a reliable honor system with unquestioned good faith. (Tell that to our Bureau of Customs.) “Filipinos had long been literate when Magellan came.” writes Harvard historian Laurence Bergreen, one of the sources of this article.

In their Middle Ages, it was the Europeans, the recently Christianized descendants of the Goths, Visigoths, Gauls and Anglo-Saxons, who were rude barbarians leading brutish lives as serfs, knights or marauding barons. They often ate tasteless, half-rotten meat (salt was a rarity) and succumbed in their un-lettered thousands, to plagues and feudal wars.

When Magellan’s Spanish Armada hove into view in March 1521, the natives of Homonhon in the Visayas must have taken pity on the small black ships with tattered sails and scruffy, starving, disoriented sailors, for they sent a small rowboat packed with rice, coconuts and bananas to their rescue. On the next island, the white, bearded strangers were feted in a bamboo palace with a banquet of roast fish, pork, turtle eggs and palm wine, by a native king whose queen wore a black-and-white gown, red lips and nails, while a quartet of young, topless damsels played music on various gongs and drums.

Those early Filipinos had been more accustomed to the tall, prosperous, Chinese ships with a trio of feathery sails stiffened with battens, for the China trade had been in place for at least 500 years. During the Ming Dynasty, Filipinos enjoyed the visits of the Treasure Fleet (1405-1500) of Admiral Cheng Ho (Zhen He) a huge, 7-ft tall, powerful eunuch, who had built 1,500 massive, 500-ft ships in a giant shipyard in Nanking with the help of 30,000 workers. The luxurious ships, each manned by 1,000 sailors ruled the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. They had staterooms with gold fittings, bronze cannon, bulkheads and watertight compartments. Some ships carried only food, including potted orange trees (which saved the Chinese from the European scurvy); others only water, or horses, troops and weapons. They had a communication system of flags, lanterns, bells, gongs and carrier pigeons; nautical charts, astronomy maps, measuring instruments and clocks using incense sticks.

The Treasure Fleet reached Africa, India and Australia, stopping en-route in the islands of our archipelago. It was discontinued for a time, when another emperor took over, but resumed and lasted till 1500. But the Chinese were not interested in conquest or territorial aggrandizement. Their purposes were trade and diplomacy. That was what our ancestors expected when they first saw the Spanish Armada.

Filipinos had never seen white men before Magellan and never thought the strangers would be as rapacious and predatory as they would prove to be. They assumed the new foreigners to be poor and needy because they had only glass beads, a string of little bells and a red cap (Magellan’s gifts) to reciprocate the native prodigality. The white men were, in fact, so dazzled by the earrings, chains, armlets and anklets, of pure gold, worn by both the native men and women that Magellan had to warn them against showing their covetousness.

At that time, our land consisted of thousands of islands with pristine, enchanting ecosystems. Our people lived along sand beaches, the banks of crystalline rivers and magical lakes where they fished; farmed the rice fields and orchards between the peaks of the Cordilleras, majestic waterfalls and volcanoes; they hunted, dug for gold, wove cloth from plants and grasses, sang and danced, swam and feasted.

They were loosely organized into small fiefdoms, ruled by occasionally-warring chieftains, attended by household serfs and slave workers and warriors. They believed in the spirits of earth, wind, fire, trees and water and in a supreme being, Bathala, who would take care of everything. Their women were priestesses and rulers, with a degree of sexual freedom that would have made the X and Y-Generations blush.

Except for the small indigenous tribe of frizzy-haired, negroid nomads, who lived in the forests and were almost extinct, our ancestors had come from the original, intrepid, sea-faring Malays who had crossed the China Sea from the Asian mainland, through Malaysia and Indonesia, and traveled northwards towards the superbly fertile islands of our archipelago. Positioned at the economic and political crossroads of the world, they welcomed all comers, and vigorously intermarried with Spaniards, Americans, Japanese, Eurasians but most of all, with Chinese. Thus did we become today’s multiracial Filipinos. And we still have the Chinese Treasure Fleet with us, in the swarm, extravagant shopping malls, built and run by taipans, Messrs, Sy, Go, Tan and others, the spiritual descendants of the fabled Cheng Ho.

* * *

Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil, a veteran journalist and author, recently published the first two volumes of her autobiography, Myself, Elsewhere and Legends and Adventures. She is also chair of the Manila Historical and Heritage Comission.



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