It’s Baybayin
July 13, 2009 by Christian · Leave a Comment
Jerweezee (San Diego CA)
Filipino Sun/Alibata/Tribal by Salvation Ink San Diego “The Kuya”
“We have the Filipino sun on the back and on the arm the word Pinoy with Alibata of kids name and Filipino/Hawaiian fusion tribal.”
Ancient Filipino script shouldn’t be called in any other way but Baybayin.
Baybayin was coined alibata by a National Language Institute member Paul Rodriguez Versoza in 1939. The said term was based on a Maguindanao alphabet related to the Arabic alif, ba, ta. There are no supporting evidences though on Versoza’s theory of baybayin and the Arabic language’s relation.
The word baybayin originated from the Tagalog root word baybay which literally means spell. And the shapes of the baybayin characters have a similarity to the ancient Javanese Kavi script. Usage of baybayin is known to have started as early as the 1400s.
The baybayin is a syllabic writing system called abugida and made up of 17 characters which can increase into 45 when the characters are combined with vowel-modifying marks called kudlits.
Baybayin.com offers more information about this ancient script.
Doh! Kalayaana!
November 15, 2007 by Christian · Leave a Comment
Came across this video on Youtube and noticed that his tattoo is missing something. If you forward to 0:44 & 1:03, you will notice the “NA” glyph. I assume he wanted a full translation of KA-LA-YA-A-N rather than KA-LA-YA-A. The “NA” glyph is missing a cancellation kudlit (either a “+”,”X” or “,”) at the bottom. It now actually says Kalayaana instead of Kalayaan like he wanted. Upon further inspection, It looks like that he used used Paul Morrow’s fonts for the design. Strange thing is that on the image he posted on his blog, the “NA” glyph does have the cancellation kudlit. Maybe it was just forgotten? Easy fix though.
Again, computer fonts are cool for educational purposes but for art? Who wants the same Baybayin fonts as someone else? Wouldn’t you have your own unique
View a Baybayin video tutorial after the jump….
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