History of Baybayin by Paul Morrow

This language of ours is like any other,

it once had an alphabet and its own letters
that vanished as though a tempest had set upon
a boat on a lake in a time now long gone.

"To My Fellow Children”,

attributed to Jose Rizal, 1869
English translation by P. Morrow

The tempest in Rizal's verse struck the Philippines in the 16th century. It was the Spanish Empire and the lost
alphabet was a script that is known today as the baybayin.

Contrary to the common misconception, when the Spaniards arrived in the islands they found more than just a
loose collection of backward and belligerent tribes. They found a civilization that was very different from their
own. The ability to read and write is the mark of any civilization and, according to many early Spanish accounts,
the Tagalogs had already been writing with the baybayin for at least a century. This script was just beginning to
spread throughout the islands at that time. Furthermore, the discovery in 1987 of an inscription on a sheet of
copper in Laguna is evidence that there was an even more advanced script in limited use in the Philippines as far
back as the year 900 C.E. (See The Laguna Copperplate Inscription)

Literacy of the Pre-Hispanic Filipinos

Although one of Ferdinand Magellan's shipmates, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote that the people of the Visayas were
not literate in 1521, the baybayin had already arrived there by 1567 when Miguel López de Legazpi reported that,
“They [the Visayans] have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned
them.” B1 Then, a century later Francisco Alcina wrote about:

The characters of these natives, or, better said, those that have been in use for a few years in these parts, an art
which was communicated to them from the Tagalogs, and the latter learned it from the Borneans who came from
the great island of Borneo to Manila, with whom they have considerable traffic...
From these Borneans the Tagalogs learned their characters, and from them the Visayans, so they call them Moro
characters or letters because the Moros taught them... [the Visayans] learned [the Moros'] letters, which many use
today, and the women much more than the men, which they write and read more readily than the latter. B2

The baybayin continued to thrive in many parts of the Philippines in the first century of Spanish occupation. Even
before the end of the 1500's the Spaniards were already printing books in the Tagalog script (see Literature),
which indicates at least an adequate level of literacy. Some accounts went so as far as to say that the literacy rate
was practically 100%. A Jesuit priest, Father Pedro Chirino wrote in 1604 that:

So accustomed are all these islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, and much less a woman,
who cannot read and write in the letters proper to the island of Manila. B3

And Dr. Antonio de Morga, a Spanish magistrate in the Philippines echoed Chirino's enthusiasm in 1609:

Throughout the islands the natives write very well using [their letters]... All the natives, women as well as men,
write in this language, and there are very few who do not write well and correctly. B4

These often quoted observations were exaggerations, of course; the historian William H. Scott managed to turn
up several examples from the 1590s of datus who could not sign affidavits or oaths, and witnesses who could not
sign land deeds in the 1620s. B5 Nevertheless, it appears that wherever the baybayin was available, literacy was
common not only among the elite but at all levels of society.

Pre-Hispanic Writing Techniques

The pre-Hispanic Filipinos wrote on many different materials; leaves, palm fronds, tree bark and fruit rinds, but
the most common material was bamboo. The writing tools or panulat were the points of daggers or small pieces
of iron. Among the manuscripts in Charles R. Boxer's collection, known as the Boxer Codex, there is an
anonymous report from 1590 that described their method of writing, which is still used today by the tribes of
Mindoro and Palawan to write their own script:

When they write, it is on some tablets made of the bamboos which they have in those islands, on the bark. In
using such a 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. B6

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.
But since the ancient Filipinos did not keep long-term written records, more durable materials, such as stone, clay
or metal, were not used. After the Spaniards arrived Filipinos adopted the use of paper, pen and ink.

Origin of the Baybayin

The word baybayin is a Tagalog term that refers to all the letters used in writing a language, that is to say, an
“alphabet” – although, to be more precise, the baybayin is more like a syllabary. It is from the
root baybáy meaning, “spell.” This name for the old Filipino script appeared in one of the earliest Philippine
language dictionaries ever published, the Vocabulario de Lengua Tagala of 1613. Early Spanish accounts usually
called the baybayin “Tagalog letters” or “Tagalog writing.” And, as mentioned earlier, the Visayans called it
“Moro writing” because it was imported from Manila, which was one of the ports where many products from
Muslim traders entered what are now known as the Philippine islands. The Bikolanos called the
script basahan and the letters, guhit.

Another common name for the baybayin is alibata, which is a word that was invented just in the 20 thcentury 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."

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. (

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 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 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 asound. 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/ewas 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/obelow.