
Download this font from: http://nordenx.deviantart.com/art/Baybayin-Modern-Damo-Font-184637586
Baybáyin Script is the Native Writing System in the Philippines (misnamed as "Alibata"), this web blog is a part of Nordenx's Anak Bathala Project. This is the Baybayin Modern Font Foundry - the source for development info, education, updates, downloads, typographic standardization, and online tools. (www.baybayinfonts.com)
UPDATE:
Outdated tech, Adobe Flash no longer functions.
So you saw your Filipino friends using Baybayin (a.k.a. Alibata to the uninformed) characters on Facebook and you wondered how they do that, right? Well, if you're not that tech savvy - here is the secret: it's called Unicode.
This typepad application converts typed text to the Baybayin Unicode character equivalent and vice versa.
If the application below doesn't load, try this link: Baybayin Unicode Converter Typepad Page
Install
.Library
folder of your home directory, making it available only to you. To make it available to all users on the computer, from the Font Book
menu, select Preferences...
, and then change the "Default Install Location:" from User
to Computer
.Install Font
.Although there are many forms of the baybayin, it must be remembered that they are not unique to the languages that share their names. That is to say, the baybayin, like our modern alphabet, can be written or printed in many ways and each style can be used to write in any language. Just as italic printing is not only for Italian, a so-called Tagalog baybayin is not just for Tagalog or a supposed Ilokano script only for Ilokano etc.
The baybayin is a single writing system. The confusion between the forms of the baybayin and various Filipino languages may be due to historical circumstances or just sloppy reporting on the part of some historians. For example, the typeface chosen by Father Francisco Lopez in 1620 to print the Ilokano version of the Doctrina Christiana looks different to the one used in the Tagalog version of 1593 but they are both just two styles of the one baybayin. However, the Lopez typeface has since come to be mistaken in some circles as the “Ilokano alphabet” simply because it was used most notably in an Ilokano book.
Other forms of the baybayin such as Bikol and Bisaya have similar histories. Their origins can be traced only as far back as certain modern printed documents of the Spanish era that were written in their respective languages – their particular styles originating in the artistry of the authors. – PAUL MORROW
"In 1921 I returned from the United States to give public lectures on Tagalog philology, calligraphy, and linguistics. I introduced the word alibata, which found its way into newsprints and often mentioned by many authors in their writings. I coined this word in 1914 in the New York Public Library, Manuscript Research Division, basing it on the Maguindanao (Moro) arrangement of letters of the alphabet after the Arabic: alif, ba, ta, “f” having been eliminated for euphony's sake." Verzosa
"Verzosa's reasoning for creating this word was unfounded because no evidence of the baybayin was ever found in that part of the Philippines and it has absolutely no relationship to the Arabic language. Furthermore, no ancient script native to Southeast Asia followed the Arabic arrangement of letters, and regardless of Verzosa's connection to the word alibata, its absence from all historical records indicates that it is a totally modern creation." ~ Author (Paul Morrow) does not use this word in reference to any ancient Philippine script.
"April 21st 2010 marked the 1110th anniversary of the oldest known written artifact from the Philippines, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription (LCI). 1110 years ago on this date (April 21st of the year 900 in our era), the original legal document was written that forgave a debt held by a person living in the general area now occupied by metropolitan Manila." ~ Christopher MillerLearn more about the Laguna Copperplate Inscription [click here]