Paul Morrow

Learn Baybayin at Folklorama, Winnipeg

Paul Morrow will be at Folklorama, Winnipeg 8/1-14 teaching Baybayin and doing name translations. From his Facebook page:

It’s the largest and longest running multicultural event in the world. The Pilipino Express is organizing the cultural display at the Nayong Pilipino pavilion. I’ll be explaining the baybayin script and transcribing names for the visitors.

Paul Morrow

Interview: Paul Morrow

Paul Morrow runs one of the most informative sites on Baybayin. Below is my interview with him.

Christian Cabuay
What got you interested in Baybayin? I assume you studied the script on your own, what was the most challenging part?

Paul Morrow
It’s a bit ironic. I became interested in Filipino/Tagalog many years ago when I discovered that Filipinos used the Roman alphabet. At the time I thought Filipinos probably wrote in Chinese or some “bizarre” script like Tibetan. That’s how little I knew. But when I happened to see a dictionary at a friend’s house, I thought, “Hey, I can read this. I think I’ll try to learn the language.” Then, a few years later, I came across an article by Lope K. Santos about the baybayin in a book for students of Tagalog. I was surprised because none of my friends had ever mentioned to me that Filipinos once had their own writing system. When I asked them I about it, they didn’t know what I was talking about. This made me very curious so I tried to find every scrap of information I could about the baybayin.

Learning the baybayin was the easy part; the challenge was finding reliable information about its history and usage. All I had in the beginning were second and third hand sources, like school textbooks. This was the dark ages before the Internet.

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