Badlit – The Bisaya Script (Sulat Bisaya) – Visayan script

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Introduction of Bisaya script (Suwat Bisaya)

Bisaya chart 2013

Badlit script / Suwat Bisaya (Baybayin Bisaya) – is an Ancient pre-Filipino writing system, it’s member of the Brahmic family and closely related to other writing system in Southeast Asia, Badlit is an Abugida or an alpha-syllabary writing system, like most writing system used in Southeast Asia, where any consonants is pronounced with a vowel and using a diacritical marks to express other vowels. It is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, space is use only after end of a sentence or punctuation, although in modern writing it usually contains spaces after each word to enhance readability.

Suwat Bisaya has 20 phonemes. There are Fifteen consonants: Ba, Ka, Da, Ga, Ha, La, Ma, Na, Nga, Pa, Ra, Sa, Ta, Wa and Ya . There are five vowels: A, E, I, O, U

Pantingog (vowels)

In ancient times, before the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines, Bisaya had three vowels phonemes: /a/. /i/ and /u/. This was later expanded into five vowels with the introduction of Spanish words. the vowels are /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/

Vowel

Katingog (Consonants)

There are Fifteen basic consonants:

consonants

Fifteen basic consonants of Suwat Bisaya b, k, d, g, h, m, n, ŋ, p, r, s, t, w, j, followed by the inherent vowel /a/ ‘as shown above.


Bisaya Consonant names depending on the points of articulation:

“Dala + ” when points touches
“Agi + ” when air passes to points
“Pugong + ” covering the velum then release
“Tulon + ” covering the velum, air passes through nasal

Consonant name 1

Kudlit (Diacritical marks)

Suwat Bisaya is an Abugida, cross between a syllabary and an alphabet writing system. They use the same basic consonants, this combine them with a Diacritical mark called a Kudlit, the kudlit allows you to change the default /a/ sound of any of the basic consonants character.

kudlitset

kudlit

Punctuation mark
Panulbok

Records of Bisaya characters

All Recorded Character chart

Related Page:

– How to write Suwat Bisaya [Click here]

4 comments
  1. Marvelous so far this is the most comprehensive that I have read, the previous one just shows us the alphabet.

  2. Pau Lo said:

    derived from sanskrit ang letters..

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