A Conference on Baybayin Script

            
                 I had an opportunity to attend a conference regarding BAYBAYIN BUHAYIN held last July 16, 2011 at P. Bernardo Elementary School in Tuazon St. Cubao, Q.C. Two sessions were provided for Filipino teachers both for elementary and secondary (morning and afternoon) coming from the four districts of Quezon City.


                 According to Mr. Bonifacio Commandante Jr (Baybayin resource person), the Baybayin is the ancient syllabary script of our early ancestors which means, "To spell". Early accounts on baybayin were written by Spanish Priest Pedro Chirino in 1604 and by Antonio de Morga in 1609 supporting the claim of Prof. F. Landa Jocano that our early Filipino ancestors had an established community life prior to the Spanish colonization.


                 Ancient Filipinos used tablets made of bamboos, bark of trees and some leaves for writing as described by Charles R. Boxer from his collection of manuscripts. In the Boxer Codex, from an anonymous report dated 1590, as stated,

"When they write, it is on some tablets made of the bamboos which they have in those islands, on the bark. In using such tablet, which is four fingers wide, they do not write with ink, but with some scribers with which they cut the surface and bark of the bamboo, and make the letters. Once the letters were carved into the bamboo, it was wiped with ash to make the characters stand out more. Sharpened splits of bamboo were used with coloured plant saps to write on more delicate materials such as leaves." 

                Early Filipinos used light materials instead of durable ones such as stone, clay or metals for they do not keep long-term written records. Indigenous people from Palawan and Mindoro still continue to practice this.

               The Baybayin is a syllabic writing system, each character stands for a syllable instead of just a basic sound and was read from left to right in rows that progressed from top to bottom, just as we read in English today.
 
               According to Mr. Paul Morrow's article "Baybayin - The Ancient Script of the Philippines" (2002):



               The Baybayin began to decline in the 1600s despite the Spanish clergy's attempts to use it for evangelization. Filipinos continued to sign their names with baybayin letters throughout the 17th and 18th century, though most of the documents were written in Spanish. During the Spanish times, baybayin went out of style so to speak. There were two factors for the decline of the baybayin script identified by Mr. Morrow:
1) Practicality was the main reason that the baybayin went out of style; and 2) social expediency was another reason for Filipinos to abandon the baybayin in favor of the alphabet. Filipinos found the alphabet easy to learn also helped them to get work under the Spanish regime as clerks, scribes and secretaries.


               Now a days, we are lucky to have organizations such as BAYBAYIN BUHAYIN and small under-funded movements working to preserve these living scripts.  Baybayin is definitely our own, truly Filipino It should be placed where it should be in our culture after hundreds of years of negligence. We could say with Baybayin, we will be identified as Filipinos.

The baybayin was a syllabic writing system, which means that each letter represented a syllable instead of just a basic sound as in the modern alphabet. There were 17 characters: 3 vowels and 14 consonants, but when combined with the small vowel-modifying marks, called kudlíts, the number of characters increased to 45. This way of writing is called an abugida. When a person spelled a word orally or recited the baybayin, the individual letters were called babâ, kakâ, dadâ, etc., but the original sequence of the letters was different to what it is today. This “alphabetical” order was recorded in the Tagalog Doctrina Christiana.