What is Alibata?

Alibata as the Tagalog script known in Unicode. It is a pre-hispanic writing system and it originated from the Javanese script Old Kawi. This writing system believed to be in use as early as the 14th century. It continued to be in use during the Spanish colonization the late 19th Century. And the term alibata literally means spelling. Closely related scripts are Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa. And it also a member of the Brahmic family (and an offshoot of the Vatteluttu alphabet.

Usage of Alibata

The alibata writing system is an abugida system using consonant-vowel combinations. It is written to basic form for each character, is a consonant ending with the vowel "A". To produce consonants ending with the other vowel sounds, a mark is placed either above the consonant (to produce an "E" or "I" sound) or below the consonant (to produce an "O" or "U" sound). The mark is called a kudlit. The kudlit does not apply to stand-alone vowels. Vowels themselves have their own glyphs. There is only one symbol for D or R as they were allophones in most languages of the Philippines, wherein D fell in initial, final, pre-consonantal or post-consonatal positions and R in intervocalic positions.

But original form however, a stand-alone consonant (consonants not ending with any vowel sound) cannot be produced, in which case these were simply not written and the reader would fill in the missing consonants through context. This method, however, was particularly hard for the Spanish priests who were translating books into the native language. Because of this Father Francisco Lopez introduced his own kudlit in 1620 that eliminated the vowel sound. The kudlit was in the form of a "+" sign, in reference to Christianity. This cross-shaped kudlit functions exactly the same as the virama in the Devanagari script of India. In fact, Unicode calls this kudlit the Tagalog Sign Virama.