Balinese script
The Balinese script, natively known as Aksara Bali and Hanacaraka, is an abugida used in the island of Bali, Indonesia, commonly for writing the Austronesian Balinese language, Old Javanese, and the liturgical language Sanskrit. With some modifications, the script is also used to write the Sasak language, used in the neighboring island of Lombok. The script is a descendant of the Brahmi script, and so has many similarities with the modern scripts of South and Southeast Asia. The Balinese script, along with the Javanese script, is considered the most elaborate and ornate among Brahmic scripts of Southeast Asia.
Though everyday use of the script has largely been supplanted by the Latin alphabet, the Balinese script has a significant prevalence in many of the island's traditional ceremonies and is strongly associated with the Hindu religion. The script is mainly used today for copying lontar or palm leaf manuscripts containing religious texts.
Characteristics
There are 47 letters in the Balinese script, each representing a syllable with inherent vowel /a/ or /ə/ at the end of a sentence, which changes depending on the diacritics around the letter. Pure Balinese can be written with 18 consonant letters and 9 vowel letters, while Sanskrit transliteration or loan words from Sanskrit and Old Javanese utilizes the full set. A set of modified letters are also used for writing the Sasak language. Each consonant has a conjunct form called gantungan which nullifies the inherent vowel of the previous syllable.Punctuation includes a comma, period, colon, as well as marks to introduce and end section of a text. Musical notation uses letter-like symbols and diacritical marks in order to indicate pitch information. Text are written left to right without word boundaries.
There is also a set of "holy letters" called aksara modre which appears in religious texts and protective talismans. Most of them are constructed using diacritic ulu candra with corresponding characters. A number of additional characters, known to be used inline in text, remains under study and those characters are expected to be proposed as Balinese extensions in due course.
Letters
A basic letter in Balinese is called aksara, and each letter stands for a syllable with inherent vowel /a/.Consonants
Consonants are called wianjana or aksara wianjana. Balinese script has 33 consonants, of which only 18 called wreṣāstra are used for writing basic vocabulary in Balinese language. The other 15, known as sualalita, are mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords in Balinese language. The consonants can be arranged into Sanskrit order and hanacaraka traditional order.''Hanacaraka'' traditional order
The consonants can be arranged in hanacaraka traditional order. The sequence forms a poem of 4 verses narrating the myth of Aji Saka. However, the hanacaraka sequence only has the 18 consonants of aksara wreṣāstra and exclude aksara sualalita. However, this table below include aksara sualalita as the current romanization have no diacritics for the consonants.Sanskrit order
As other Brahmic scripts, consonants in Balinese script can be arranged into Tamil / Sanskrit order. Thus, Balinese script had been influenced by Kalvi / Shiksha. The table below uses the order.Aksara wreṣāstra. They are, in traditional order: ha na ca ra ka / da ta sa wa la / ma ga ba nga / pa ja ya nya.
The consonant ha is sometimes not pronounced. For example, hujan is pronounced ujan.
The exact form of ca laca is unknown because only the appended form is left. However, the independent form is included in Unicode.
alpaprana mahaprana
Actually an alveolar consonant, but classified as dental by tradition
The former of the two letter forms is more frequently used.
Vowels
s, called suara or aksara suara, can be written as independent letters when vowels appear in initial position. They are described in the following list:''Gantungan'' and ''Gempelan''
Gantungan and gempelan should be used to represent the consonant cluster, as zero vowel signs are not used in the middle of sentences in general. Thus, as other members of the Brahmic family, the consonant cluster is written cursively. Each consonant letter has a corresponding either gantungan or gempelan form, and the presence of gantungan and gempelan eliminates the inherent vowel of the letter it is appended to. For example, if the letter na is appended with gantungan da, the pronunciation becomes nda.Gantungan or gempelan can be applied with pangangge to a letter. However, attaching two or more gantungan to one letter is forbidden; this condition is known as tumpuk telu. Adeg-adeg may be used in the middle of a sentence to avoid such situation. For example, tamblang with consonant cluster mbl is written as.
The forms of gantungan and gempelan are as follows:
Diacritics
Diacriticsare symbols that cannot stand by themselves. When they are attached to the independent letters, they affect the pronunciation. The three types of diacritics are pangangge suara, pangangge tengenan and pangangge aksara.
''Pangangge suara''
Pangangge suara change the inherited vowel of a consonant letter. For example, the letter with ulu becomes ni ; ka with suku becomes ku. The diacritics in this category are summarized in the following list:As first romanization of Balinese Language was developed during Dutch Colonial Era, letter e represents sound and letter é represents sound and as in Van Ophuijsen Indonesian and Dutch orthography. After 1957, sounds , and are represented with e as in current Indonesian orthography with exception for new learner and dictionary usage.
Many consonants can form ligatures with tedung:
''Pangangge tengenan''
Pangangge tengenan, except adeg-adeg, adds a final consonant to a syllable. It can be used together with pangangge suara. For example, the letter with bisah becomes ; with suku and surang becomes . Compared to Devanagari, bisah is analogous to visarga, cecek to anusvara, and adeg-adeg to virama.Adeg-adeg is zero vowel diacritics as in other Brahmic scripts in Balinese script. Adeg-adeg, as virama in Devanagari, suppress the inherent vowel /a/ in the consonant letter. Adeg-adeg is used on impossibility of gantungan and gempelan usage such as succeeded by punctuation marks, attachment of two or more gantungan to one letter, preservation of combination and disambiguation.
''Pangangge aksara''
Pangangge aksara is appended below consonant letters. Pangangge aksara are the appended forms of the ardhasuara consonants. Guwung macelek is the appended form of the vowel ra repa.Numerals
Balinese numerals are written in the same manner as Arabic numerals. For example, 25 is written with the Balinese numbers 2 and 5.| Balinese numeral | Balinese numeral | Arabic numeral | Name | Balinese numeral | Balinese numeral | Arabic numeral | Name | |
| 0 | Bindu Windu | 5 | Lima | |||||
| 1 | Siki Besik | 6 | Nem | |||||
| 2 | Kalih Dua | 7 | Pitu | |||||
| 3 | Tiga Telu | 8 | Kutus | |||||
| 4 | Papat | 9 | Sanga Sia |
If the number is written in the middle of a text, carik has to be written before and after the number to differentiate it from the text. Below is an example of how a date is written using Balinese numerals :
| Balinese script | Transliteration |
| Bali, 1 Juli 1982. |
Other symbols
There are some special symbols in the Balinese script. Some of them are punctuation marks, and the others are religious symbols. The symbols are described in the following list:| Symbol | Symbol | Name | Remarks |
| Carik Carik Siki. | Written in the middle of a sentence, like a comma. Also, written surrounding numerals to differentiate them from the text. | ||
| Carik Kalih Carik Pareren | Written at the end of a sentence, like a full stop. | ||
| Carik pamungkah | Functions like a colon. | ||
| Pasalinan | Used at the end of a prose, letter, or verse. | ||
| Panten or Panti | Used at the beginning of a prose, letter, or verse. | ||
| Pamada | Used at the beginning of religious texts. This symbol is a ligature of the letters ma, nga, ja, and pa, forming the word mangajapa, which roughly means "praying for safety". | ||
| Ongkara | Sacred symbol of Hinduism. This symbol is pronounced "Ong" or "Om". |
Orthography
Balinese Language
Assimilation
in Balinese occurs within the word. Balinese script represents assimilation occurred, however Latin script sometimes may not represent this. In general, alveolar consonants are assimilated into palatal, retroflex or labial. There are more specific descriptions in assimilation combination:- alveolar nasal| assimilated into palatal nasal| if succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster nc and nj. For example, word wianjana is written as , not written as .
- voiceless alveolar sibilant| assimilated into voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant| if succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster sc. For example, word pascad is written as , not written as .
- voiced alveolar stop| assimilated into voiced palato-alveolar affricate| if succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster dny. For example, word yadnya is written as , not written as .
- alveolar nasal| assimilated into retroflex nasal| if preceded by retroflex consonants, such as consonant cluster rn. For example, word karna is written as , not written as .
- voiceless alveolar sibilant| assimilated into voiceless retroflex sibilant| if succeeded by retroflex consonants, such as consonant cluster st and sn . For example, word dusta is written as , not written as .
- alveolar nasal| assimilated into bilabial nasal| if succeeded by labial consonants. For example, word tanbara is written as , not written as .
Liquid Consonant-Schwa Combination
Latin Script Transliteration
Latin script transliteration into Balinese script is based on phonetics. As vocabulary expands, foreign sounds are introduced and have no equivalent on Balinese script. In general, transliteration of foreign sounds is shown as below.Sasak Language
Fonts
There are some fonts for Balinese script as of 2016. Bali Simbar, Bali Galang, JG Aksara Bali, Aksara Bali, Tantular Bali, Lilitan, Geguratan and Noto Sans Balinese are some fonts that included Balinese script. The fonts have different degree of compatibility each other, and most contain critical flaws.' is first font for Balinese script by I Made Suatjana Dipl Ing at 1999. Bali Simbar is not compatible for Mac-OS and Unicode. JG Aksara Bali, was designed by Jason Glavy, has over 1400 Balinese glyphs, including a huge selection of precomposed glyph clusters. The latest version of JG Aksara Bali is released on 2003, thus has no compatibility with Unicode. Bali Simbar and JG Aksara Bali, in particular, may cause conflicts with other writing systems, as the font uses code points from other writing systems to complement Balinese's extensive repertoire as Balinese script was not included in Unicode at the creation time.
Aksara Bali by Khoi Nguyen Viet is the first hacked Unicode Balinese font with a brute-force OpenType implementation. The results depend on how well other OpenType features are implemented in the renderer. The font has about 370 Balinese glyphs, but does not display the vowel correctly. The team of Aditya Bayu Perdana, Ida Bagus Komang Sudarma, and Arif Budiarto has created a small series of Balinese fonts: Tantular Bali, Lilitan, and Geguratan, all using hacked Unicode and a brute-force OpenType implementation. Tantular has about 400 Balinese glyphs. These all have serious flaws.
Another Unicode font is ' from Google. However, Noto Sans Balinese exhibits , such as an inability to correctly display more than one diacritic per consonant.
The free font Bali Galang, maintained by Bemby Bantara Narendra, displays correctly apart from the consonant-spanning vowels and. However, those vowels can be manually substituted by their graphic components, and followed by the length sign, which together display as and. It also automatically assimilates some consonants within words. It displays corresponding Balinese glyphs instead of Latin letters.
Unicode
Balinese script was added to the Unicode Standard in July, 2006 with the release of version 5.0.The Unicode block for Balinese is U+1B00-U+1B7F:
Gallery
Examples
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:Sami manusané sané nyruwadi wantah mardéka tur maduwé kautamaan lan hak-hak sané pateh. Sami kalugrähin papineh lan idep tur mangdané paḍa masawitra melarapan semangat pakulawargaan .
Kakawin Bhāratayuddha Pasalin 1 Verse 1 :
Sang śūrā mriha yadnya ring samara mahyuni hilanganikang parāng muka, līlā kembangura sekartaji nikéśaning ari pejahing raṇānggaṇa, ūrṇāning ratu māti wīja nira, kuṇḍa nira nagaraning musuh geseng, sāityā uti teṇḍasing ripu kapöka niratha nika suśraméng gala.