Worth Repeating

Repeating Homophonic Syllables:
"A Baybayin Tradition worth Repeating."

A sample of an occurrence of vowel sign doubling in old Tagalog script. (Excerpted from a 1635 land deed, University of Santo Tomas Archives, reproduced by Villamor in 1922), provided by Christopher Ray Miller, Ph.D., 2014:

From a 1635 land deed. UST Archives.

Earlier this year, we covered this in our papers and presentations at the International Workshop on Endangered Scripts of Island Southeast Asia held in the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.

“Vowel sign doubling: Tagalog script historically shares with Buginese a spelling convention that can be called “vowel sign doubling”. This consists in marking a consonant letter with two vowel signs, either the same or two different ones, to represent two succeeding syllables beginning with the same consonant.”
~ Miller (2011-2014)

In his book on Baybayin, Jean-Paul Potet Ph.D., noted that this same convention occurs in a Bugis script inscription on an old tombstone in Brunei. The inscription shows two i-vowel diacritic marks on top of a "NA" letter/character to be read as néné, meaning "grandfather". (Potet, 2014; Noorduyn, 1993)

Reintroducing Traditions:

Since I introduced the ᜍ "RA" glyph into my fonts a few years ago, it slowly gained acceptance and has become a de facto standard for the "RA" character. Similarly, I there has been an increase of online usage and enthusiasm for Antoon Postma's "pamudpod", from Surat Mangyan, a crescent-shaped virama (for indicating a trailing vowel-less consonant) since I also include the glyph in all my fonts. So, I think that it is about time that we bring back the dual-kudlit for syllable doubling convention. I am confident that the practice will gain acceptance once again, given some time, exposure, and proper education.

There is one hitch though, we need a couple more new markers. Since the /a/ vowel sound inherent to each base baybayin character is obviously not marked, how do we repeat an /a/ ending syllable without doubling a base letter?  ...or repeated compound syllables too for that matter? We have to look into other related South East Asian abugida scripts for answers. Luckily, we didn't have to look too far. I found that the Buginese (Lontara/Bugis) ᨞ “pallawa” mark is used to separate rhythmic-intonational groups and also used to denote the doubling of a word or its root. We can borrow the same concept and style/position as the the pallawa mark.

We can actually use the pallawa mark to denote word or root doubling. It would greatly reduce reduplication of words like "halo-halo", "bola-bola", "turo-turo", "Bong-bong", "bato-bato", "sunod-sunod", etc.

Borrowing from the pallawa concept, I introduced the : colon as a “padalaw-a” mark in my Tokyo paper. The padalaw-a mark also doubles the vowel characters in the same manner prescribed in the book "Ang Wika at ang Baybaying Tagalog" by Tolentino (1937) except that the marker is on the right side instead of being on top or bottom of the ᜁ I and ᜂ U characters. The padalaw-a mark makes it possible to repeat an /a/ ending syllable without doubling a base letter.

Another extended possibility for this type of Kudlit mark is what I call a “pahantig” mark which is a single solid dot • mark on the right side of the a consonantal syllable character; it duplicates the consonant sound at the end of the marked syllable.

Before we could disseminate this, I would have to update all my fonts to include the pallawa mark. Currently only a couple of my commercial license fonts has the updated markers. The pallawa is assigned to the \ backslash key. In the mean time, we can educate baybayin practitioners about this forgotten tradition and updated solution.

Here's a recent chart to explain the dual/doubling/repeating marker system:

Baybayin dual / doubling / repeating marker system chart.

For a larger view of the chart above: CLICK HERE

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Modern Baybáyin Chart

Conservative Modern Reform:
(For review; as submitted, archived, and published in international linguistic academia.)

The image/chart above is my current draft for a standardized modern baybayin script.

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The chart below lists the keystrokes for typing baybayin using fonts.



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Any other character sets you'll find on your online searches that claims to be traditional or modern baybayin are most likely made-up or misleading. If I haven't linked or talked about them here in my blog, or you can't verify them via respectable baybayin sites like Paul Morrow's or Kristian Kabuay's, then more likely those sets are not accepted by the community of baybayin practitioners & experts.

Any other sets of characters that include special individual characters for C, Q, Ch, Th, Z, J, and or Ñ instead of character combinations are suspect and most likely are made-up (conscript). And unfortunately, we have found out that the use of the word "Alibata" as a name or description of the scripts (without including the correction & acknowledging that the real name of the writing system is actually "baybayin") is more likely to be an indicator that the information or the character set is flawed.

My work on the indigenous Philippine writing system is well researched (for more than two decades). It is academically backed & published, traditionally mindful, typographically sound, and community & expert approved.

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Sometimes, forgotten traditions are re-discovered.



We make sure that these forgotten traditions are documented and revived as well as corrected. For example: the double top-down kudlit is being mistakenly used as a vowel cancellation method; there is a precedent that this is used differently by our ancestors. Instead of a vowel-killer, the double top-down kudlits are actually bi-vowel consonantal syllable repeaters: ᜊᜒᜓ = "bobi" ≠ "b"

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On your mark, get set, xo! The great baybayin kudlit race begins.

Slit, slash, dot, dot, dit, dit, XOXO, LOL! It may sound funny to you but it's no laughing matter.


Different styles of kudlit marks.

Cross "Kudlit" - Ang kulit n'yo!

Ever since the Spanish priest Fr. Francisco Lopez introduced the cross-shaped kudlit back in 1620 for the Ilocano printing of Doctrina Cristiana, we have been at odds with "reform". Whether it's truly a matter of principle, or protest, or stubbornness, the two camps of baybáyin practitioners (traditionalists and reformists) need to find a middle ground. While the first two reasons (principle & protest) are reasonable personal choice/preference, the stubborn ones are quite beyond reason.

While some baybayin practitioners might say that the Spaniards (Lopez) "invented" the cross kudlit just to convert more natives into Christianity, that is hearsay (or should I say "heresy"? (sic, pun)). It is true though that the Doctrina Cristiana books were published to take advantage of the native people's literacy. However, the motivation for the friars to "reform" baybáyin script for legibility has its merit in modern typography. The decision to include a baybayin version of the virama (vowel cancellation mark) is not just a spur of the moment "invention" but it is more likely based on a careful study of linguistics by scholars (who happen to also be friars) at the time. Other writing methods (Abugida) related to or predecessors of baybayin have vowel cancellation marks or systems, so adopting a similar system is not entirely unreasonable. Note also that the kavi script in the Laguna Copperplate Inscriptions (LCI), which is dated back to 900CE, used both virama and ligatured glyphs to cancel vowel sounds similar to the methods of other Brahmic scripts and also what is currently being developed for the Súlat Kapampángan version of baybáyin.


A cleaned-up illustration of the Laguna Copperplate inscription

The virama for Tagalog Baybáyin was rejected by natives because they considered the script adequate without it. While that works well for their need at the time, the Filipino languages' lexicon has grown dramatically since then. The need for a virama becomes apparent even when writing the most mundane notes:

Correction on top image: Typo "you're" was supposed to be "you".

When asked to read the sentence above, written in traditional "no dead consonants" method, the most common response was: "bayag mo'y maliit dahil sa utin ng itim na malaki", which means: "your balls are small (shrunk) because of (seeing) the black guy's big organ". Imagine the confusion at a duck farm in Pateros. Incited after a client ordered several breeding pairs of ducks and he received this note along with his bill? When all the poor farmer wanted to convey is, "bayad mo'y maliit dahil sa unti ng itik na malaki", meaning, "your bill is small because we are short on adult itik ducks". The farmer, just wanting to make up for the incomplete order by giving his client a discount, unwittingly conveyed the wrong message.

Whatever your qualms are about the cross kudlit, for baybáyin to be useful in writing normal correspondence these days, the virama is a practical approach. Even the Mangyan "pamudpod" mark, introduced by Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma, has been better received and is used by the Hanunóo. While the Kapampangan method of vowel cancellation is proving quite useful for both modern & traditional artistic design; although it has its limitations when it comes to modern typography (typing in a word processor and publication) and creating standardized fonts. For arts and crafts, tradition is fine. But for common use like signage and publishing, the virama is important. I say, learn to use both methods and teach both methods. Use whichever method is appropriate for the composition at hand.

Kulitan blues continues!

Crescents, and dashes, and dots, oh my! So many stylistic takes on the kudlit markers! I don't really mind at all, even I do them differently from time to time depending on the style of the characters I am creating or writing. The problem arises when artists and font designers develop or stylize separate marks for soft and hard vowels e/o and i/u respectively, where crescents are flipped, dashes angled differently, and dots become hollow and solid. I don't discourage the practice (I also do it), but I want people to think about ease of legibility especially when designing fonts.

Don't get me started on coming up with new punctuation marks and numbers! ...that's another blog topic. ;)