Tagbanwa script
Native writing system of Tagbanwa languages and other indigenous languages of Palawan
Tagbanwa is one of the scripts indigenous to the Philippines, used by the Tagbanwa and the Palawan people as their ethnic writing system.
The Tagbanwa languages (Aborlan, Calamian and Central), which are Austronesian languages with about 8,000-25,000 total speakers in the central and northern regions of Palawan, are dying out as the younger generations of Tagbanwa are learning and using non-traditional languages such as Cuyonon and Tagalog, thus becoming less knowledgeable of their own indigenous cultural heritage. There are proposals to revive the script by teaching it in public and private schools with Tagbanwa populations.
01Origin
The Tagbanwa script was used in the Philippines until the 17th century. Closely related to Baybayin, it is believed to have come from the Kawi script of Java, Bali and Sumatra, which in turn, descended from the Pallava script, one of the southern Indian scripts derived from Brahmi.
02Features
Tagbanwa is an alphasyllabary or abugida in which each letter represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and an inherent vowel /a/, a feature that it shares with many related scripts from SE Asia as they derive from variants of the Brahmic scripts of India. Similar to these scripts, vowels other than /a/ are indicated by the addition of a diacritic above (for /i/) or below (for /u/) the letter. Lone vowels are represented by their own, independent letters, thus /a/, /i/ and /u/ since there are only three. Syllables ending in a consonant are written without the final consonant. Tagbanwa is distinguished from Baybayin by the shapes of several letters, most notably ‹ka› and ‹wa› that are markedly different from other varieties.
Tagbanwa is traditionally written on bamboo in vertical columns from bottom to top and left to right. However, it is read from left to right in horizontal lines.
| vowels | consonants | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᝠ a | ᝣ ka | ᝤ ga | ᝥ nga | ᝦ ta | ᝧ da | ᝨ na | ᝩ pa | ᝪ ba | ᝫ ma | ᝬ ya | ᝮ la | ᝯ wa | ᝰ sa | |||||
| ᝡ i | ᝲ i | ᝣ + ᝲ ᝣᝲ ki | ᝤ+ ᝲ ᝤᝲ gi | ᝥ + ᝲ ᝥᝲ ngi | ᝦ + ᝲ ᝦᝲ ti | ᝧ + ᝲ ᝧᝲ di | ᝨ + ᝲ ᝨᝲ ni | ᝩ + ᝲ ᝩᝲ pi | ᝪ + ᝲ ᝪᝲ bi | ᝫ + ᝲ ᝫᝲ mi | ᝬ + ᝲ ᝬᝲ yi | ᝮ + ᝲ ᝮᝲ li | ᝯ + ᝲ ᝯᝲ wi | ᝰ + ᝲ ᝰᝲ si | ||||
| ᝢ u | ᝳ u | ᝣ + ᝳ ᝣᝳ ku | ᝤ + ᝳ ᝤᝳ gu | ᝥ + ᝳ ᝥᝳ ngu | ᝦ + ᝳ ᝦᝳ tu | ᝧ + ᝳ ᝧᝳ du | ᝨ + ᝳ ᝨᝳ nu | ᝩ + ᝳ ᝩᝳ pu | ᝪ + ᝳ ᝪᝳ bu | ᝫ + ᝳ ᝫᝳ mu | ᝬ + ᝳ ᝬᝳ yu | ᝮ + ᝳ ᝮᝳ lu | ᝯ + ᝳ ᝯᝳ wu | ᝰ + ᝳ ᝰᝳ su | ||||
Tagbanwa writing makes use of single (᜵) and double (᜶) punctuation marks.
03Ibalnan
In the 20th century, this script was adopted from the Tagbanwa by the Palaw'an further south in the island. They call this alphabet Ibalnan and the vowel mark an ulit.
04Unicode
Tagbanwa script was added to the Unicode Standard in March, 2002 with the release of version 3.2.
The Unicode block for Tagbanwa is U+1760, U+177F:
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tagbanwa script”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Tagbanwa script sample.svg by M. Adiputra, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Ibalnan.jpg by Bonifacio A. Comandate, Jr., PhD, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Ibalnan script sample.png by Glennznl, CC BY-SA 4.0
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