Modern Baybayin

Kudlit

There have been a few attempts to alter the original Baybayin for modern use. One of the first attempts to “reform” the Baybayin was in 1620 when Fr. Francisco Lopez was about to publish the Ilokano Doctrina. Seeing the “limitations” of Baybayin, he invented a new kudlit in the shape of a cross. When placed under a consonant, it would cancel the “a”.

I personally don’t like it due to it’s colonial origins but I do see the purpose of it. Thanks a surge of Baybayin tattoos, the Spanish kudlit has made a comeback due it being the most familiar method of of isolating the consonant. One common Baybayin tattoo is the Tagalog word for STRONG - LAKAS. Using traditional Baybayin, it would be written like this:

Using the Spanish kudlit, the tattoo would look like this:

Besides the Spanish + kudlit, I’ve seen an X and backslash after the glyph used as illustrated below:

The backslash kudlit is one of the many additions to the script championed by Bayani Mendoza de Leon. He released a great Baybayin manual full of instructions and history about the script.

Baybayin: Ancient Script of the Philippines: A Concise Manual published by Bycynthium treasures

In addition to the backslash kudlit, the manual also goes into great detail on the O vs U & E vs I issue. This looks to resolve some of the guesswork that’s needed in order to read Baybayin.

Also covered are consecutive similar vowels and consonants, silent consonants and added consonant letters. Below is a scan of the expanded Baybayin from page 46 of the manual.

Nordenx is also working on expanding Baybayin.

* Alternative kudlits (hollow & solid) to differentiating soft & hard vowels.
* Alternative (artistic/funtional) representations for certain characters.
* Alternative syllable repeater/doubling method, the “2″ kudlit.
* Keystrokes 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 rendering alternative 2nd kudlit characters.