Suyat


Suyat is the modern collective name of the indigenous scripts of various ethno-linguistic groups in the Philippines prior to Spanish colonization in the 16th century up to the independence era in the 21st century. The scripts are highly varied; nonetheless, the term was suggested and used by cultural organizations in the Philippines to denote a unified neutral terminology for Philippine indigenous scripts.

Ancient Philippine scripts

Ancient Philippine scripts are various writing systems that developed and flourished in the Philippines around 300 BC. These scripts are related to other Southeast Asian systems of writing that developed from South Indian Brahmi scripts used in Asoka Inscriptions and Pallava Grantha, a type of writing used in the writing of palm leaf books called Grantha script during the ascendancy of the Pallava dynasty about the 5th century, and Arabic scripts that have been used in South East Asian countries.
Since the 21st century, these scripts have simply been collectively referred to as "suyat" by various Filipino cultural organizations.

Kawi script

The Kawi script originated in Java, and was used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia, and where Baybayin script came from.
The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines. It is a legal document with the inscribed date of Saka era 822, corresponding to April 21, 900 AD. It was written in the Kawi script in a variety of Old Malay containing numerous loanwords from Sanskrit and a few non-Malay vocabulary elements whose origin is ambiguous between Old Javanese and Old Tagalog. A second example of Kawi script can be seen on the Butuan Ivory Seal, found in the 1970s and dated between the 9th and 12th century. It is an ancient seal made of ivory that was found in an archaeological site in Butuan. The seal has been declared as a National Cultural Treasure. The seal is inscribed with the word "Butwan" in stylized Kawi. The ivory seal is now housed at the National Museum of the Philippines.

Historical Indic scripts of the Philippines

Baybayin is an Umbrella term or hypernym of the scripts that has been widely used in traditional Tagalog domains and in other parts of Luzon and Visayas in the Philippines. Baybayin uses the Abugida writing system. A collective name, Baybayin has many variants, and the Baybayin script continued to be used during the early part of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines until largely being supplanted by usage of the Latin alphabet.
An earthenware burial jar, called the "Calatagan Pot," found in Batangas is inscribed with characters strikingly similar to Baybayin, and is claimed to have been inscribed ca. 1300 AD. However, its authenticity has not yet been proven.
The University of Santo Tomas Archives in Manila is one of the largest archives in the Philippines, and currently possesses the most extant collections of ancient variants of baybayin script in the world. The use of the Baybayin was widespread during the 15th century. By the end of 17th century, its use was almost non-existent. By the 18th century, it was extinct. The inability of the ancient script to record the new sounds introduced by the Spaniards, the rapid acquisition of literacy in the Latin script with its concomitant social and material benefits, and the disruption of traditional family activities were the main culprits for the loss of the other variant of Baybayin script. Buhid, Hanunóo, and Tagbanwa are the only surviving variant of Baybayin script, however its use are confined to writing poems and other literary pursuits among its native speakers.

Arabic

The Arabic alphabet, or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms.
Unlike variants of Baybayin script which uses alphasyllabary and Eskayan script which uses syllabary, the Arabic script is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other impure abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics.

Jawi

Jawi' is an Arabic script for writing Tausūg of Sulu, Philippines, Malay, Acehnese, Banjarese, Minangkabau,  and several other languages in Southeast Asia.
''.
The script became prominent with the spread of Islam, supplanting the earlier writing systems. The Tausug of the Philippines, Malays, and other countries that uses it held the script in high esteem as it is the gateway to understanding Islam and its Holy Book, the Quran. The use of Jawi script was a key factor driving the emergence of Malay as the lingua franca of the region, alongside the spread of Islam. It was widely used in Sulu, Philippines Sultanate of Malacca, Sultanate of Johor, Sultanate of Brunei, Sultanate of Sulu, Sultanate of Pattani, the Sultanate of Aceh to the Sultanate of Ternate in the east as early as the 15th century.

Modern suyats

Suyat includes the Modern kulitan script of the Kapampangan people, variants of Baybayin, the Iniskaya script of the Eskaya people, Jawi script, and Kirim script.

Modern Indic Scripts of the Philippines

In 1999, four suyat scripts were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, under the name Philippine Paleographs . The four scripts, hanunó'o/hanunoo, buhid/buid, Tagbanwa script, and Ibalnan script, were recognized by UNESCO as the only existing suyat scripts still used by certain Philippine communities in their daily lives. UNESCO also recognized that the four scripts, along with thirteen other suyat scripts, have existed within the Philippine archipelago since the 10th century AD. The ambahan poetry made with the hanunó'o/hanunoo script was also cited. The inscription of the four suyat scripts was the first documentary heritage of the Philippines to be inscribed in the Memory of the World Programme. Computer fonts for these three living scripts are available for IBM and Macintosh platforms, and come into two styles based on actual historical and stylistic samples. PostScript and TrueType fonts as well a concise manual that gives a background of these ancient scripts and a short tutorial on how to write with them are included in each package.
ScriptRegionSample
Ibalnan BaybayinPalawan
Hanunó'o scriptMindoro
Buhid scriptMindoro
Tagbanwa scriptCentral and Northern Palawan


Eskayan

is the constructed script of the auxiliary Eskayan language of the island of Bohol in the Philippines. Like Yugtun and Fox script, it is based on cursive Latin. The script was developed approximately 1920–1937. "Although the script is used for representing Visayan —a widely used language of the southern Philippines—its privileged role is in the written reproduction of a constructed utopian language, referred to as Eskayan or Bisayan Declarado... the Eskayan language and its script are used by approximately 550 people for restricted purposes in the southeast of the island of Bohol."

Jawi script

The Tausūg language was previously written with the Arabic alphabet. The script used was inspired by the use of Jawi in writing the Malay language. The Arabic script used to write the Tausug language differs in some aspects to the script used for the Arabic language and in the Jawi script used for Malay languages. One of the main differences is in the way that word-initial vowels are written. In Arabic, /in/ is ; in Jawi, it is. In Tausug, it is. The Tausug Arabic script utilises the letter yā' with a hamza to represent a short vowel. If a kasra is added, it becomes an 'i' sound. If a fatha is added, it becomes an 'a' sound. If a damma is added, it becomes a 'u' sound.
An example of the Arabic alphabet in writing the Tausūg language:
CharacterIsolatedInitialMedialFinalName
اﺍﺎalip
بﺏﺑـﺒـﺐbā'
تﺕﺗـﺘـﺖtā'
جﺝﺟـﺠـﺞjīm
ددـدdāl
رﺭـرrā'
سﺱﺳـﺴـﺲsīn
غﻍﻏـﻐــﻎgayn
ڠڠڠــڠــڠngā'
فﻑﻓـﻔـﻒpā'
ککﻛـﻜـکkāp
گگﮔـﮕــﮓgāp
لﻝﻟـﻠـﻞlām
مﻡﻣـﻤـﻢmīm
نﻥﻧـﻨﻦnūn
وﻭـوwāw
هﻩﻫـﻬﻪhā'
يﻱﻳـﻴـﻲyā'
ءءءhamja
أأـأalip with hamja above
ﺅﺅـﺆwāw with hamja above
ئئئـــئــئyā' with hamja above
لالالاــلاــلاlām alip

National writing system

The "National Script Act" went before the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines in 2011. The bill calls for the protection and conservation of Baybayin as the national script of the Philippines. Among its strategies, it aims to promote the Baybayin script by having it inscribed on all locally produced or processed food products.
Due to lack of congressional and senatorial sessions and support, the bill did not pass into law in the 16th Congress. It was refiled in 2016 under the 17th Congress, with little political support.
The Act came before the House again in 2018. According to a press release from the House, the bill "declares there is a need to promote, protect, preserve and conserve "Baybayin" as the National Writing System of the Philippines, using it as a tool for cultural and economic development to create a consciousness, respect and pride for the legacies of Filipino cultural history, heritage and the country's authentic identity."

Calligraphy

The diversity of suyat scripts have also established various calligraphy techniques and styles in the Philippines. Each suyat script has its own suyat calligraphy, although all suyat calligraphy are collectively called as Filipino suyat calligraphy for the sake of nationalism. Western-alphabet and Arabic calligraphy, however, are not considered as Filipino suyat calligraphy as the alphabets used did not develop indigenously.