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Baybayin touches our roots through our writing system
TO start off with this piece, we would like to clarify that the characters on the cover and this page that most of us are unfamiliar with, should not be assumed as gang graffiti or nonsense. These characters are in fact, an important part of our heritage that would probably be in danger of being fforgotten.
Baybayin is a pre-Filipino writing system from the islands called as the "Philippines." It comes from the word "baybay," which literally mean "spell." A very old Tagalog term that refers to all the letters used in writing a language, another common name for the baybayin is alibata, a word invented by Paul Versoza in 1914, a member of the old National Language Institute and a dean of the University of Manila. Basing it on the Maguindanao (Moro) arrangement of letters of the alphabet after the Arabic alif, ba, ta (alibata), eliminating the "f."
Although history writes that the people of the Visayas were not literate in 1521 when Ferdinand Magellan arrived, the Baybayin had already arrived there by 1567. Miguel Lopez de Legazpi reported that, "They [the Visayans] have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them." (from Baybayin, The Ancient Script of the Philippines by Paul Morrow)
The system continued to thrive in many parts of the Philippines even before the end of the 1500s, when the Spaniards were already printing books in Tagalog script. Bearing a slight resemblance to the ancient Kavi script of Java, Indonesia, Filipinos in the 16th century at that time believed that their Baybayin came from Borneo.
Baybayin is a syllabic writing system, which means each letter is represented by a syllable. With a total of 17 characters (three vowels and 14 consonants), it is combined with the small vowel-modifying marks called kudlits, increasing the number of characters to 45.
Baybayin as artwork
In the Bay Area, one of the young Filipinos who has embraced the Baybayin with much enthusiasm is Christian Cabuay. Running a number of websites dedicated to educating Filipinos about this writing system, Christian’s passion about the Baybayin makes it an opportunity for the next generation of Filipino-Americans to touch this part of their heritage.
"Ive always been interested in my Filipino culture. Growing up here in the states, I knew more about the Philippines than most of my peers," said Christian and added, "Baybayin is just an extension of that."
He also tells about his first exposure to the Baybayin in his junior year of high school. "I remember finding an old pamphlet about the Katipunan and the revolution. In it, there were photos of all the revolution flags. When I learned that that the capital ‘I’ character represented ‘K’ in our very own indigenous alphabet, I made it my personal goal to learn how to read and write Baybayin."
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