Caddo alphabet, with help from Baybayin

I was viewing some beautiful Caddoan artwork yesterday, and picked out some visual motifs that seem to repeat themselves.  Before long, I had visited Wikipedia's page on the Caddo language, and I quickly scrawled out a proof of concept for a Caddo alphabet.

Why should Caddo languages have their own alphabet?  Why not just use Latin?

Because your alphabet says something about your culture.  If your language has sounds that Latin does not approximate, then custom letters are needed.  (For example, English could use a letter like Thorn!)

A writing system crafted to complement your culture can be an artistic outlet.

More importantly, though: if your culture is distinct from American culture, and it has a language worth preserving as a vehicle for that culture, then a home-built writing system is one of many ways to promote that culture. 

Here's my proof-of-concept Caddoan.  The shapes were taken from Jeri Redcorn's sublime pottery designs, as well as historical photographs of Caddo art.  I also admit a passing influence from Baybayin, since a few of its letter shapes are universal and beautiful, and correspond to some of the Caddo shapes I use.  I adapted three.

Baybayin on Mozilla Firefox Markup

Check out my Baybayin on Markup:

https://markup.mozilla.org/en-US/#/linear/yk3M

Baybayin Expanded

In the past year or two, I've looked at Baybayin and how elegant its letters are, how enjoyable it is to write... but also how truncated it is for English. I've come up with ways to represent R versus D, looked at historical letter-orderings, thought about how to use ancestor scripts (including the Nagari) to split out more vowel sounds, and looked at historical samples of Tagalog to see how certain letter clusters are handled.

Now I want to put it all together. Several times (because I expect to do poorly the first couple times, then get better results as I re-try). To extend Baybayin in ways that do the least harm to it.

I'll be needing to see how others have done it. Anyone have suggestions?

[Baybayin] Toying with E and I

I played around with variant forms for E and I today. E is closer to Sanskrit's vowel carrier, and I started from E's 'wave' over the Sanskrit /I/, adjusted to account for Baybayin 'style'. It ended up using the /YA/ character, which makes some sense to me. It's potentially a win-win. It also makes me wonder if /YA/ is distantly related to Sanskrit /I/.

I also thought about an /R/ based partly on the form borrowed from Bugis by Paul Verzosa, and partly on the Bisaya Hervas font's character for D/R.


I think it could work nicely.

[Baybayin] Sulat Something Something

Assume for the moment that a "reasonable" "historic" letter order is that found in Doctrina Cristiana:

A U E H P K S L T N B M G D/R Y NG W

Also for the moment, assume that our originator of this script lumped a few "leftover" letters at the end, following an order similar to Rejang and Bugis, for R, Y, and W, inserting NG between Y and W (and not too far removed from Kerinci, Lampung, and Sundanese, either).

Leaving the vowels alone, that leaves a potential mnemonic in the remaining consonants:

H P K S L T N B M G

Assume yet further that S-L is SU-LA "Sula(t)", a letter, a note, a jotting.

Then we have the following word-puzzle:

H P K SuLat T N B M G

Sadly, I'm not fluent in Tagalog of any era.

T-N /TiNu/ 'taught' ?

"HaPa(k), Ko SuLa(t), TiNu" B- M- G-

"broken, I have written and taught" ?

Of course I'm worse than a fool for even posting that attempt.

[Baybayin] The Vowels...

Baybayin vowels all look sort of like they descend from the Devanagari vowels A and U, don't they?

And, while we're at it, look at the Devanagari letter 'I'. Lose the bar on top, and turn the squiggle on its side, and it resembles Baybayin /YA/, don't you think?

[Baybayin] My Ordering

All this is wonderful fun. Is it of value? Not any of the stuff from me. But I can think about it just a little more. My collation order for Baybayin -- in other words, an 'ABC' for Baybayin, based on historical orderings for its ancestor and sibling scripts, including ghost spots for letters it doesn't have -- would go something like this:

K G NG P (F) B (V) M T (Th) D N (Ch J Ñ) Y (R) L W (Sh) S H A I U

[Baybayin] Character Order

Right then. Plainly, it seems then that the overwhelming order in related scripts is Brahmic -- letters are ganged up in groups, palatals, labials, whatnot. For examples, from the non-Javanese scripts Batak, Rejang, Kerinci, Lampung, and Bugis. I've filtered out many of the letters Baybayin doesn't have, but kept the remaining letters in order:

a(from h) h(from k) n m t d l r b p w y j s g ng ny i u
a(from h) h k b p n w g j d r m t s y ng l c nd mb i u
k g ng   t d n   p b m   c j ny   s r l y w h a
k g ng   t d n   p b m   c j ny   s r l w y h a(from h)
k g ng   p b m   t d n   c j ny   y a l r s w h
k g ng   p b m   t d n   c j ny   y r l w s a h
k g ng   p b m   t d n   c j ny   r l w s h a
k g ng   p b m   t d n   c j ny   r l w s a h y
k g ng   p b m   t d n   c j ny   y s w l (a?)

I've split the latter 7 into groups by sound-correspondence. And I'm going to try to analyze them in groups.

The first group is easiest, because all 7 start with the k-series: (K G NG). This group is present in Baybayin, and I hypothesize that Baybayin collation may have begun with K G NG.

The next three groups are nearly as easy, referring to labials (P B M) and dentals (T D N) and some sort of ts- or ch- series (C J NY NC). The C-series isn't in Baybayin. The other two are, but which order to use?

As a more remote cross-reference, here is Kannada, the precursor to Telegu, and the Granthas, the script used since the 5th century and a precursor to a lot of scripts in India. In both cases, I've excluded most of the letters that don't pertain to Baybayin:

K G NG  C J Ny   T D N   P B M      Y R L V  Sh S H
K G NG  C J Ny   T D N   P B M      Y R L V  Sh S H

So in other words, the older or more conservative scripts have T D N first, while the younger ones place P B M in front. Either way would be fine. For now I will collate P B M before T D N.

Now what to do with the remaining letters?
Granthas and Kannada somewhat loosely group them into [Y R L V] and [Sh S H].
I see R-L-W and Y-R-L-W. There's also a fair case for following with S, then H, then the vowels. But there's no compelling evidence to say if Baybayin actually followed the order of one of these, or went its own route. My preferred order would be traditional. And would probably be wrong.

So my hypothesis, for what it's worth, is:

Baybayin collation order hypothesis, mostly unsupported:

K G NG P B M T D/R N Y L W S H A I U

In grid form:

  K       G     NG 
  P  (F)  B (V) M 
  T  (Th) D/R   N 
 (Ch  J         Ñ) 
  Y  (R)  L     W 
 (Sh) S   H 
  A   I   U

Note that I've included slots for potential, non-existent F, Th, Ch, J, Ny(Ñ), V, and Sh characters, according to their places in related scripts.

[Baybayin] Character Order and Implications

From my former post, I noted that there's recorded, historical evidence that the Sanskrit order was used for collating Baybayin characters; the order appears to be:

A U E Ha Pa Ka Sa La Ta Na Ba Ma Ga Da/Ra Ya NGa Wa

It would be nice to have a mnemonic phrase, in Tagalog, to remember this by. Any takers?



OK, so I have implications to ponder here.

Question 1 Under what circumstances would Baybayin retain a Sanskrit order? Answer: when it's taught and transmitted. When did you learn the ABC song? Very early in your education. A First Thing.

Question 2 Why would Baybayin retain a Sanskrit order? Answer: because the script it was derived from also retained the Sanskrit order. However the derivation occurred, its concept originated closely from a working knowledge of a pre-existing Brahmic script.

Say it was one person who sat down one day and decided to use Script X to write Old Tagalog. She already had to know Script X's sounds and order; she was taught it. She might have been literate.

Question 3 If Baybayin really did stick close to its parent or "godparent" script, does this mean that Baybayin isn't really a descendant of Kawi?

Kawi's ancient character order was (I think):

Ha Na Ca Ra Ka Da Ta Sa Wa La Pa Dha Ja Ya Nya Ma Ga Ba Tha Nga

Doesn't look at all similar.

And I can't find out what the Buginese order is, nor Cham order... although they both might be gathered by family in the order K/G C/J T/D P/B Y/R/L/V/S.

They don't look similar either. At least not at first glance. I'm probably missing some important information here...

I suppose I can assume that Assamese order is more or less the same as Sanskrit.

[Baybayin] Original Character Order?

So what was the original ordering of the characters?

When we write the vowels first, I see vestiges. But then we usually go in "font order", that is, K D G H K L M N P (R) S T... you know, the trusty Latin-based alphabetical order.

In the Doctrina Cristiana, however, the Baybayin character order was recorded as A U E H P K S L T N B M G D/R Y NG W. That ain't based on OUR alphabet, bub. And... see the vowels? They're first, like we often still see the characters written.

So there's a datum. Where can I go with that? If I knew more about the Brahmic-related scripts, then I'd compare directly with them.

Next best thing: I'll use the Japanese kana ordering. From Wikipedia:

The gojūon is an ancient convention (somewhere around 1004 to 1028 AD), originating in the character ordering in Sanskrit, as well as a means for expressing the hansetsu of Chinese characters.

Aha. So let's compare the ordering of gojūon with the Doctrina Cristiana order:

Kana   Doctrina
A      A
I      
U      U/O
E      E/I
O
       H
       P
Ka     K
Sa     S
()     L
Ta     T
Na     N
Ha     B*
Ma     M
()     G
      D/R
Ya     Y
Ra     
()     NG
Wa     W

* Some differences apply: In Japanese, the kana has its own 'kudlits' which can, for example, turn /HA/ into /PA/ or /BA/ -- /KA/ into /GA/. And Japanese has no /L/ sound -- /R/ is midway between our L and R, and use it in both places. And it has no /NG/.

* h/b/p (はばぱ) are placed where p/b are in Sanskrit (again from Wikipedia). So it looks like Baybayin is closer to Sanskrit order than Kana order, which is perfectly reasonable.


Looks pretty reasonable to assume that Baybayin originally used an old Brahmic ordering. Not surprising. But it's nice to have some evidence for that.

[Baybayin] Calatagan Pot Inscription

The above image is of a Philippine pot, created around 1300 A.D. It's not Baybayin, but it's close. Note that it doesn't use Kavi's word construction rules (in particular, it doesn't use its vowel-cancellation method). Several characters are the same as Baybayin. But today I noticed something else.

Today, I noticed that the Kavi letter "A" appears to be there. Check out the side-by-side comparison I made last post. Compare the Kavi "A" with characters 1-4, 3-1, and 5-7. Yes, I know, 3-1 and 5-7 have kudlits. And yet the similarity is tantalizing.

So, completely guessing here, the letters appear to be:

1: TA-BA-KI A-BA
2: LA-BA-MA-NA-LA-DA-KI
3: I?-NU-MA-NI-*1-YA-YA
4: PA-KA-KA-*1-LA-WA-YA
5: BA-*1-HA-DA-KI-NA-U?
6: DA-KA-LA-BI-TA-GA-NGA

Side by Side: Kavi, Baybayin, and Telegu

Here's a side-by-side comparison. I can sort-of see the family resemblence in several characters, noted in green.

Pallava, Kavi, and Baybayin

There's a good Omniglot entry on Pallava, and an AncientScripts entry for Kawi.

Looking at Pallava, I can make out some character forms in Kavi... and Baybayin...

So, I wonder what it would feel like to write Baybayin in the Kavi style? Stacking characters in order to cancel vowels?

Kudlit or Kulitan?

AD 900: the Kavi script is alive and well on Manila.

AD 1300: Someone etches a Philippine script on a pot. I've got an image of it here, characters handily numbered.

It's similar to Baybayin, kudlits and all. Could easily be a parent script.

AD 1500: Baybayin was in use by the general population.

By the end of the 1600s Baybayin is moribund.

A few small and remote populations continue to write, including Tagbanwa, Buhid, Hanunóo, and Kapampangan: more or less versions of Baybayin. Tagbanwa, Hanunóo and Buhid appear to have evolved along similar lines, while Kapampangan uses fewer characters, but retains Kawi word construction rules. In many respects, Kapampangan seems to be midway between Kavi and Baybayin.

And some Filipino native writing has survived to the present day.

But between Tagalog and Ilocano speakers there are 65+ million people, versus perhaps 3 million using Kapampangan, and a few tens of thousands of people using the other surviving abugidas.

And so we come to the modernization problem: how best the Baybayin can speak in modern Tagalog and Ilocano.

I begin to understand. It's not a matter of stamping out the surviving scripts; it's a matter of re-establishing a script for Tagalog and Ilocano. And the place to start is with "classical" Baybayin.

Fortunately, the Filipino script was a continuum of writing styles and methods using similar characters. Different areas, and even perhaps different individuals, approached the problem in different ways, but fundamentally with the same character set.

This is not a place for invention, but rather, accommodation and patience, perhaps.

Baybayin - attempt #2 with font

So my preferred style of writing Baybayin has already changed.
Note an apparent error in the above sample: the "o" kudlit looks like "x". This appears to be an effect of the stylized kudlit in Paul Morrow's source font.

I kept the Bisaya /DA/ to use exclusively as /RA/.

I exchanged Paul Morrow's /NA/ with one with a shallower arc. Then, I got rid of the bare /N/, in exchange for the /NA/ with my kill-jot.

I modified the /SA/ to be a bit more like the Kapampangan version -- call it a 'modernization' -- but it's still recognizably the Baybayin /SA/. It's an intermediate stage between Paul Morrow's /SA/ and the Kapampangan one, then. In retrospect, I think that's a mistake, and I'm going to revert it.

I've tentatively started using a /HA/ with a shallow wave above it as /CHA/. Not sure about that one yet.

This morning, I composed my modified character set into a font. Since my font is almost entirely derivative, I retained Paul Morrow's name and copyright on it. Caveat: there's at least one bug to work out in it.

Baybayin - attempt #1

I've been reading about Baybayin and Philippine writing systems in general. This post prompted me to think about "good" orthographical extension of the script. So, I decided to try my hand at writing it. I took Paul Morrow's useful reference pages, borrowed some beautiful Baybayin styles and adopted some conventions of my own. I'm already finding things I don't like about the way I did it, but it's a start.

Here's a sample of my writing style:



Then I was redirected to the sophisticated Kapampangan script, which is obviously related to Baybayin... and is still used today. The question pops up: is Baybayin relevant at all? Why turn back the clock to something which essentially died, when a thriving related script is here?

If anyone has the answer to that question, please share. I'm not abandoning Baybayin, I'm just trying to figure out what its reach should be, and how it should do the reaching.