Paul Rodriguez Verzosa
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Another common name for the baybayin is
alibata, which is a word that was invented just in the 20
th century by a member of the old National Language Institute, Paul Versoza. As he explained in
Pangbansang Titik nang Pilipinas in 1939,
"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 (alibata), “f” having been eliminated for euphony's sake." B7
Versoza'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 Versoza's connection to the word
alibata, its absence from all historical records indicates that it is a totally modern creation. The present author does not use this word in reference to any ancient Philippine script.
Many of the writing systems of Southeast Asia descended from ancient scripts used in India over 2000 years ago. Although the baybayin shares some important features with these scripts, such as all the consonants being pronounced with the vowel
a and the use of special marks to change this sound, there is no evidence that it is so old.
The shapes of the baybayin characters bear a slight resemblance to the ancient Kavi script of Java, Indonesia, which fell into disuse in the 1400s. However, as mentioned earlier in the Spanish accounts, the advent of the baybayin in the Philippines was considered a fairly recent event in the 16th century and the Filipinos at that time believed that their baybayin came from Borneo.
This theory is supported by the fact that the baybayin script could not show syllable final consonants, which are very common in most Philippine languages.
(See Final Consonants) This indicates that the script was recently acquired and had not yet been modified to suit the needs of its new users. Also, this same shortcoming in the baybayin was a normal trait of the script and language of the Bugis people of Sulawesi, which is directly south of the Philippines and directly east of Borneo. Thus most scholars believe that the baybayin may have descended from the Buginese script or, more likely, a related lost script from the island of Sulawesi. Whatever route the baybayin travelled, it probably arrived in Luzon in the 13th or 14th century.
Literature of the Ancient Filipinos
All early Spanish reports agreed that pre-Hispanic Filipino literature was mainly oral rather than written. Legazpi's account of 1567, quoted earlier, went on to say:
They have their letters and characters... but never is any ancient writing found among them nor word of their origin and arrival in these islands; their customs and rites being preserved by traditions handed down from father to son without any other record. B8
The Boxer Codex manuscript from 1590, also mentioned earlier, reported that:
They have neither books nor histories nor do they write anything of length but only letters and reminders to one another... [And lovers] carry written charms with them. B9
Aside from writing letters and poetry to each other, the ancient Filipinos adorned the entrances of their homes with incantations written on bamboo so as to keep out evil spirits.
In the Spanish era Filipinos started to write on paper. They kept records of their property and their financial transactions, and Fr. Marcelo de Ribadeneira said in 1601 that the early Filipino Christians made little notebooks in which they wrote, “in their characters or letters” the lessons they were taught in church.
B10 They often signed Spanish documents with baybayin letters and many of these signatures still exist in archives in the Philippines, Mexico and Spain. There are even two land deeds written in baybayin script at the University of Santo Tomas.
(See: Baybayin Handwriting)
To take advantage of the native's literacy, religious authorities published several books containing baybayin text. The first of these was the
Doctrina Christiana, en lengua española y tagala printed in 1593. The Tagalog text was based mainly on a manuscript written by Fr. Juan de Placencia. Friars Domingo de Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr supervised the preparation and printing of the book, which was carried out by a Chinese artisan whose name was not recorded for posterity.
For modern scholars the
Doctrina is like the Rosetta Stone of baybayin writing and 16th century Tagalog. Each section of the book is presented in three parts: first, the Spanish text then, the Tagalog translation written in the Spanish alphabet, and finally the Tagalog written in the baybayin script. The
Doctrina is the earliest example of the baybayin that exists today and it is the only example from the 1500s. The book also provides a view of how Tagalog was spoken before Spanish had a chance to make its full impact on the language.
(A facsimile of the Doctrina can be purchased at a very low price at Reflections of Asia.)
The Doctrina of 1593 was printed using the woodblock method. That is, an entire page was carved into a single block of wood. Ink was then applied to the block and a thin sheet of paper was gently brushed onto it to pick up the engraved image. This method did not ensure regularity in the shapes of the baybayin characters. However, when printing with moveable types came to the Philippines in the beginning of the 1600s, baybayin letters began to take on more consistent, though stylized shapes because each character was carved into its own moveable block. Fr. Francisco Lopez used a set of these types in 1620 to produce his Ilokano
Doctrina based on the catechism written by Cardinal Belarmine, best know today as the first inquisitor of Galileo. The typeface he chose was used in at least two earlier Tagalog books and today it is one of the most popular baybayin styles among enthusiasts of the ancient script.
(See Baybayin Styles) It was in this book that Lopez attempted to reform the baybayin, which, in the view of most Spaniards, was seriously flawed.
(See Final Consonants)
Nevertheless, the Spanish friars used the baybayin script not only to teach their religion to the Filipinos, but also to teach other clerics how to speak the local languages. The writers of the early grammars encouraged their readers to learn the baybayin, as Fr. Francisco Blancas de San Jose explained in his
Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala of 1610:
Sometimes adjoining the Tagalog word written in Spanish letters I place the Tagalog characters with which the same word is also written, in order that through them whoever can read them can come to know the proper pronunciation of that word... For which reason those who wish to speak well should learn to read Tagalog characters... B11
The baybayin was also described in Visayan grammar books of the 1600s such as Alonso de Méntrida's
Arte de la lengua Bisaya-Hiligayna de la isla de Panay, 1637, and Domingo Ezguerra's
Arte de la lengua Bisaya en la provincia de Leyte, 1663. However, Ezguerra's example of the script contained printing mistakes. A kind of Spanish check mark was put in the place of two different letters. Méntrida wrote the following about his typeface:
It is to be noted that our Bisayans have some letters with different shapes, which I place here; but even they themselves do not agree on the shapes of their letters; for this reason, and because of the limited types available, I have shown the characters according to the Tagalogs. B12
The Baybayin Method of Writing
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 a total of 17 characters: three 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.
“The abc. in the Tagalog language”A U/O I/E HA PA KA SA LA TA NA BA MA GA DA/RA YA
NGA WA
Click on image for more information. The Consonants & Kudlíts
In their simplest form, each consonant represented a syllable that was pronounced with an
a vowel (like the
u in “up”). Simply adding a tick, dot or other mark to the letter, would change the inherent
a vowel sound. These marks were called
kudlíts, or diacritics in English. A
kudlit was placed above a consonant letter to give it an
i or
e vowel sound. When it was placed below the letter it changed the vowel sound to
u or
o.
The Vowels
The three vowel characters were only used at the beginning of words and syllables, or syllables without any consonant. There were only three vowels because the ancient Tagalogs, and many other linguistic groups, did not distinguish between the pronunciations of
i and
e, or
u and
o until Spanish words entered their languages. Even today these sounds are interchangeable in words such as
lalaki/lalake (man),
babae (woman) and
kababaihan (womanhood or womankind),
uód/oód (worm),
punò (tree trunk) and
punung-kahoy (tree), and
oyaye/oyayi/uyayi (lullaby).
The vowel characters actually represented vowels that were preceded by a glottal stop. This pronunciation was more common in the pre-Hispanic era but has changed over the centuries due to the influences of western languages. This shift can be seen when early texts, such as the
Doctrina Christiana, are compared to modern Filipino. For example, we syllabicate the words
ngayón (today) and
gagawín (will do) as follows:
nga-yon and
ga-ga-wín respectively. But the baybayin text of the
Doctrina reveals a different syllabic division. Ngayón was written,
ngay-on, and
gagawin was written
ga-gaw-in.
The R Sound
The Tagalogs used only one character for
da and
ra,
. The pronunciation of this letter depended on its location within a word. The grammatical rule has survived in modern Filipino that when a
d is between two vowels, it becomes an
r as in the words
dangál (honour) and
marangál (honourable), or
dunong (knowledge) and
marunong (knowledgeable).
However, this rule could not be relied upon in other languages, so when other linguistic groups adopted the baybayin, different ways of representing the
r sound were required. The Visayans apparently used the
d/ra character for their own words but used the
la character for Spanish words.
(See Visayan examples.) Fr. Lopez's choice of
d/ra or
la seemed to be random in the Ilokano
Doctrina, which caused many corruptions of Ilokano words.
(See excerpts from his Doctrina.) However, a chart drawn by Sinibaldo de Mas in 1843 showed
la doubling for the Ilokano
ra while his Pangasinan list showed no substitute for
ra at all. The Bikolanos modified the
d/ra character to make a distinct letter for
ra.
(See the chart in Baybayin Styles.)
The Nga Character 
A single character represented the
nga syllable. The latest version of the modern Filipino alphabet still retains the
ng as a single letter but it is written with two characters. The
ng is the alphabet's only remaining link to its baybayin heritage.
Punctuation
Words written in the baybayin script were not spaced apart; the letters were written in a continuous flow and the only form of punctuation was a single vertical line, or more often, a pair of vertical lines. || This fulfilled the function of a comma and a period, and indeed, of practically any punctuation mark in use today. Although these bars were used consistently to end sentences, they were also used to separate words, but in an unpredictable manner. Occasionally a single word would be enclosed between these marks but usually sentences were divided into groups of three to five words.
Final Consonants
The most confusing feature of the baybayin for non-native readers was that there was no way to write a consonant without having a vowel follow it. If a syllable or a word ended with a consonant, that consonant was simply dropped. For example, the letters
n and
k in a word like
bundók (mountain) were omitted, so that it was spelled
bu-do.
The Spanish priests found this problem to be an impediment to the accurate translation of their religious texts. So, when they printed a lesson in baybayin it was usually accompanied by a Spanish translation and the same Tagalog text using the Spanish alphabet, as in the
Doctrina Christiana. Other priests simply stopped using the baybayin in favour of the alphabet. The first attempt to “reform” the baybayin came in 1620 when Fr. Francisco Lopez prepared to publish the Ilokano
Doctrina. He invented a new kudlít in the shape of a cross. This was placed below a baybayin consonant in order to cancel the inherent
a sound. Lopez wrote:
The reason for putting the text of the Doctrina in Tagalog type... has been to begin the correction of the said Tagalog script, which, as it is, is so defective and confused (because of not having any method until now for expressing final consonants - I mean, those without vowels) that the most learned reader has to stop and ponder over many words to decide on the pronunciation which the writer intended. B13
Although Lopez's new way of writing provided a more accurate depiction of the spoken language, native Filipino writers found it cumbersome and they never accepted it. In 1776, Pedro Andrés de Castro wrote about their reaction to the invention:
They, after much praising of it and giving thanks for it, decided it could not be incorporated into their writing because it was contrary to the intrinsic character and nature which God had given it and that it would destroy the syntax, prosody and spelling of the Tagalog language all at one blow... B14
Direction of Baybayin Writing
The baybayin was read from left to right in rows that progressed from top to bottom, just as we read in English today. However, this has been a point of controversy among scholars for centuries due to conflicting accounts from early writers who were confused by the ease with which ancient Filipinos could read their writing from almost any angle. As the historian William H. Scott commented,
The willingness of Filipinos to read their writing with the page held in any direction caused understandable confusion among European observers who lacked this ability - and causes some irritation to Tagalog teachers in Mangyan schools today. B15 [Note: The peoples collectively known as Mangyans still use their own form of the baybayin in Mindoro.]
Some observers were mistaken to believe that the baybayin should be read vertically from bottom to top in columns progressing from left to right because that was how the ancient Filipinos carved their letters into narrow bamboo strips. However, it was simply a matter of safety that when they used a sharp instrument to carve, they held the bamboo pointing outward and they carved away from their bodies, just as modern Mangyans do today.
(See photo above.) This gave the appearance that they were writing from the bottom upward. However, this did not necessarily mean that the text was supposed to be read that way too.
Although the ancient Filipinos did not seem to mind which way they read their writing, the clue to the proper orientation of the text was the
kudlíts, or diacritic marks that alter the vowel sound of the letters. In syllabic scripts such as Kavi, Bugis and others closely related to the baybayin, the text was read from left to right and the diacritics were placed above and below the characters (
i/
e was above and
u/
o was below). When the ancient Filipinos carved the baybayin into the bamboo strips, they placed the
kudlíts to the left of the letter for the
i/
e vowel and to the right for the
u/
o vowels. Thus, when the finished inscription was turned clockwise to the horizontal position, the text flowed from left to right and the
kudlíts were in their proper places,
i/
e above and
u/
o below.
Variants of the Baybayin
Some writers have claimed that there were several different ancient alphabets in the Philippines, which belonged to different languages and dialects in Luzon and the Visayas. The number of scripts mentioned usually ranges from 10 to 12. However, none of the early Spanish authors ever suggested that there was more than one baybayin script. In fact, even when they wrote about other Philippine languages, they usually referred to the baybayin as “Tagalog” writing or as quoted earlier, Pedro Chirino called it “the letters proper to the island of Manila.”
The baybayin was a single script, and just like the alphabet today, its appearance varied widely according to each person's unique handwriting.
(See: The Baybayin as Written by Filipinos) When the printing press was introduced to the Philippines, this variety was reflected in the typefaces. The misconception that each province had its own alphabet arose in the 19th century, long after the baybayin had fallen out of use. Authors who wrote about Philippine culture, such as Eugène Jacquet (1831) and Sinibaldo de Mas (1843), collected old samples of baybayin writing and classified them according to where they were found or the language of the text.
(See: Baybayin Styles.) They were aware that these samples were variations of one script but, later writers such as Pardo de Tavera and Pedro Paterno around the turn of the century, assembled their own comparison charts from these samples and other sources and labelled them as distinct “alphabets” from various regions.
(See: Paterno's Cuadro Paleografico) These charts were later reproduced in schoolbooks of the 20th century with very little in the way of explanation for their content. Thus, through generations of copying and recopying, these individual samples, many of which were merely one person's particular handwriting style, came to be known as distinct alphabets that belonged to entire regions or linguistic groups.
The clearest example of this kind of misinterpretation is the baybayin typeface that Francisco Lopez chose in 1620 for his Ilokano
Doctrina and for his
Arte de la lengua yloca of 1627. It first appeared in two Tagalog books,
Arte y reglas de la lengua Tagala (1610) by Francisco Blancas de San Jose and
Vocabulario de lengua Tagala (1613) by Pedro de San Buenaventura.
(See the chart on the right.) However, Eugène Jacquet called this style the Ilokano alphabet in his
Notice sur l'alphabet Yloc ou Ilog (1831) because it was used most notably in two Ilokano books.
B16 But, as quoted earlier, even Lopez said that he put “the text of the [Ilokano]
Doctrina in Tagalog type.” Still, the Lopez typeface is often mistakenly called the pre-Hispanic Ilokano alphabet.
Baybayin Lost
Although the baybayin had spread so swiftly throughout the Philippines in the 1500s, it 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 even into the 18th century, though most of the documents were written in Spanish. Gaspar de San Agustín still found the baybayin useful in 1703. In his
Compendio de la lengua Tagala he wrote, “It helps to know the Tagalog characters in distinguishing accents.”
B17 And he mentioned that the baybayin was still being used to write poetry in Batangas at that time. But in 1745 Sebastián Totanes claimed in his
Arte de la lengua Tagala that,
Rare is the indio who still knows how to read [the baybayin letters], much less write them. All of them read and write our Castilian letters now. B18
However, Totanes held a rather low opinion of Philippine culture and other writers of the period gave a more balanced view. Thomas Ortiz felt it was still necessary to describe the Tagalog characters in his
Arte y Reglas de la lengua Tagala of 1729 and as late as 1792 a pact between Christians and Mangyans on the island of Mindoro was signed with baybayin letters, which is not surprising because the Mangyans never stopped using their script.
Many people today, both ordinary Filipinos and some historians not acquainted with the Philippines, are surprised when they learn that the ancient Filipinos actually had a writing system of their own. The complete absence of truly pre-Hispanic specimens of the baybayin script is puzzling and it has lead to a common misconception that fanatical Spanish priests must have burned or otherwise destroyed massive amounts of native documents as they did so ruthlessly in Central America. Even the prominent Dr. H. Otley Beyer wrote in
The Philippines before Magellan (1921) that, “one Spanish priest in Southern Luzon boasted of having destroyed more than three hundred scrolls written in the native character.”
B19 Historians have searched for the source of Beyer's claim, but until now none have even learned the name of that zealous priest. Furthermore, there has never been a recorded instance of ancient Filipinos writing on scrolls. The fact that they wrote on such perishable materials as leaves and bamboo is probably the reason why no pre-Hispanic documents have survived.
Although many Spaniards didn't hide their disdain for Filipino culture, the only documents they burned were probably the occasional curse or incantation that offended their beliefs. There simply were no “dangerous” documents to burn because the pre-Hispanic Filipinos did not write at length about such things as their own beliefs, mythology, or history. These were the subjects of their oral record, which, indeed, the Spanish priests tried to eradicate through relentless indoctrination. But, in regard to writing, it can be argued that the Spanish friars actually helped to preserve the baybayin by continuing to use it and write about it even after it fell out of use among most Filipinos.
It is more likely that mere practicality was the main reason that the baybayin went out of style. Although it was adequate for the relatively light requirements of pre-Hispanic writing, it could not bear the burdens of the new sounds from the Spanish language and that culture's demand for an accurate written representation of the spoken word. The baybayin could not distinguish between the vowels
i and
e, or
u and
o, or the consonants
d and
r. It lacked other consonants too, but more important, it had no way to cancel the vowel sound that was inherent in each consonant. Thus consonants could not be combined and syllable final consonants could not be written at all. Without these elements the meanings of many Spanish words were confused or lost completely.
Social expediency was another reason for Filipinos to abandon the baybayin in favour of the alphabet. They found the alphabet easy to learn and it was a skill that helped them to get ahead in life under the Spanish regime, working in relatively prestigious jobs as clerks, scribes and secretaries. With his usual touch of exaggeration, Fr. Pedro Chirino made an observation in 1604 that shows how easily Filipinos took to the new alphabet.
They have learned our language and pronunciation and write it as well as we do, and even better, because they are so clever that they learn everything very quickly... In Tigbauan [Panay] I had a small boy in school who in three months, by copying letters that I received in good script, learned to write much better than I, and translated important papers for me most accurately, without errors or falsehoods. B20
But if reasons of practicality were behind the demise of the baybayin, why did it not survive as more than a curiosity? Why was it not retained for at least ceremonial purposes such as inscriptions on buildings and monuments, or practiced as a traditional art like calligraphy in other Asian countries? The sad fact is that most forms of indigenous art in the Philippines were abandoned wherever the Spanish influence was strong and only exist today in the regions that were out of reach of the Spanish empire. Hector Santos, a researcher living in California, suggested that obligations to the Spanish conquerors prevented Filipinos from maintaining their traditions:
Tributes were imposed on the native population. Having to produce more than they used to, they had less time to pass on traditional skills to their children, resulting in a tightening spiral of illiteracy in their ancient script. B21
Baybayin Found
In some parts of the Philippines the baybayin was never lost but developed into distinct styles. The Tagbanuwa people of Palawan still remember their script today but they rarely use it. The Buhid and especially the Hanunóo people of Mindoro still use their scripts as the ancient Filipinos did 500 years ago, for communication and poetry. Dr. Harold Conklin described Hanunóo literature in 1949:
Hanunóo inscriptions are never of magical import, nor are they on mythological or historical topics. Written messages (love letters, requests etc.,) are occasionally sent by means of inscribed bamboos, but by far the most common use of this script is for recording ambáhan [Hanunóo] and urúkai [Buhid] chants. Both of these types consist largely of metaphorical love songs. B22
Dr. Fletcher Gardner described their postal system in 1943:
A bamboo letter is fastened in a cleft stick and placed by the trailside. The first passer-by, who is going in the direction of the addressee, carries it as far as his plans allow and leaves it again by the trail, to be carried on by some other person. Perhaps half a dozen volunteers may assist in conveying the letter to its designation. B23
Today there are small under-funded movements working to preserve these living scripts, such as the Mangyan Assistance & Research Center in Panaytayan, Mansalay, Mindoro, directed by Antoon Postma and the Palawan State University Tagbanwa Script Project, aided by Dr. Jesus Peralta jr. at the Philippine National Museum. In 1994, Hector Santos created several Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanuwa computer fonts for publishing and education as well as fonts for the ancient baybayin.
(See A Philippine Leaf for more about these living scripts and Hector's fonts.)
The information revolution has allowed Filipinos to learn more about the pre-Hispanic era on the Internet than was ever taught in Philippine schools. As a result many Filipinos are taking a new interest in their own heritage and it is usually the baybayin that catches their attention first. Through the use of computer fonts, the baybayin is now being used in graphic designs for web sites, multimedia art, jewellery, compact discs, T-shirts, and logos.
(See Baybayin Links) And for some Pinoys, it seems that the path has come full circle. Whereas long ago the Visayan
pintados were tattooed according to their status in the community, today a growing number of young Filipinos are getting tattooed with baybayin characters to show their pride in their heritage.
Paul Morrow
©2002 Visit
Baybayin Links for more information about the ancient scripts of the Philippines.
Many thanks to the following people who have provided material and information for this article:
Charity Beyer Bagatsing, Michael Cueva, Terrio Echevez, Wolfgang Kuhl, Jojo Malig, Dr. Malcolm Warren Mintz, and Hector Santos.
The complete notes and bibliography for this article are available for printing at
http://www.mts.net/~pmorrow/baynotes.htm.
The Lopez "Ilokano" type font compared to earlier Tagalog fonts. From W.H. Scott (1994, p. 214.)
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