Balinese script

The Balinese script, natively known as and , ( Balinese: ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭᬩᬮᬶ) 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.Kuipers, Joel (2003)
''Indic Scripts of Insular Southeast Asia: Changing Structures and Functions''
. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

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 or palm leaf manuscripts containing religious texts.Fox, Richard (2013)
''Rival Styles of Writing, Rival Styles of Practical Reasoning''
Heidelberg: Institut für Ehtnologie.

Earliest record

Belanjong pillar

The Belanjong pillar, also Blanjong pillar or Blanjong inscription ( Indonesian: Prasasti Blanjong, Balinese: ᬧ᭄ᬭᬰᬵᬲ᭄ᬢᬶᬩ᭄ᬮᬜ᭄ᬚᭀᬂ), is a pillar established in 914 CE in the harbour of Belanjong, in the southern area of Sanur in Bali. This is the earliest evidence of Balinese literary script and language.

Language-script and Date

The inscription is written in both the Indian Sanskrit language and Old Balinese language, using two scripts, the Nagari script and the Old Balinese script (which is used to write both Balinese and Sanskrit). The Old Balinese in pre-Nagari script is on one side of the pillar, while the Sanskrit inscription in Pallava-derived old Javanese script (also called Kawi script)A short history of Bali by Robert Pringle p. 46
/ref> is on the other side.''The people of Bali'' Angela Hobart p. 141
/ref>

The pillar is dated according to the Indian Shaka era, on the seventh day of the waxing half ('saptāmyāṁ sita') of the month Phalguna of the ''Śaka'' year 835, which corresponds to 4 February 914 CE as calculated by Louis-Charles Damais.Louis-Charles Damais (1947) ''Études balinaises: I. La colonnette de Sanur'' p. 127
/ref>Louis-Charles Damais (1959) "Ouvrages d'Études Indonésiennes", ''Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient'', 49, 2, pp. 685-686.

Characteristics

There are 47 letters in the Balinese script, each representing a syllable with inherent vowel or 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 (''Scriptio continua'').

There is also a set of "holy letters" called which appears in religious texts and protective talismans. Most of them are constructed using diacritic with corresponding characters. A number of additional characters, known to be used inline in text (as opposed to decoratively on drawings), 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 (), and each letter stands for a syllable with inherent vowel /a/.

Consonants

Consonants are called () or (). Balinese script has 33 consonants, of which only 18 called () are used for writing basic vocabulary in Balinese language. The other 15, known as (), are mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords in Balinese language. The consonants can be arranged into Sanskrit order and traditional order.

traditional order

The modern Balinese languages does not make use of the whole inventory of consonants inherited from Sanskrit. The 18 consonants used in Balinese () are traditionally arranged following the Javanese sequence, in which 20 letters form a four-line pangram narrating the myth of Aji Saka. The remaining consonants () are used in Sanskrit transcription.

Consonant clusters

As in other members of the Brahmic family, consonant clusters are written cursively, by combining a consonant an appended letter () or attached letter (). For example, , a appended with is pronounced da Each consonant letter has a corresponding or .

A consonant may be marked with both a or and a vowel diacritic (), but attaching two or more to one letter is forbidden. When three consonants occur together, vowel-killer () may be used in the middle of a word. For example, in the word , the consonant cluster ''mbl'' is spelled .

For a few letters, , , and adding a or also eliminates the letter's inherent vowel .

Vowels

Vowels, called () or (), can be written as independent letters when vowels appear in initial position.

Diacritics

Diacritics ( () are symbols that cannot stand by themselves. When they are attached to the independent letters, they affect the pronunciation. The three types of diacritics are , , and .

Vowel diacritics

Vowel diacritics () change the inherent vowel of a consonant letter. For example, the letter plus becomes .

(), except , adds a final consonant to a syllable. It can be used together with . For example, the letter () with () becomes (); () with () and () becomes (). Compared to Devanagari, is analogous to visarga, to anusvara, and to virama.

is zero vowel diacritics as in other Brahmic scripts in Balinese script. , as virama in Devanagari, suppress the inherent vowel in the consonant letter. is used on impossibility of gantungan and gempelan usage such as succeeded by punctuation marks, attachment of two or more gantungan to one letter (, lit. three layers), preservation of combination (, rather than ) and disambiguation.

() is appended below consonant letters. are the appended () forms of the (semivowel) consonants. is the appended form of the vowel ().

Numerals

Balinese numerals are written in the same manner as Arabic numerals. For example, 25 is written with the Balinese numbers 2 and 5.

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 (date: 1 July 1982, location: Bali):

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:

Orthography

Balinese language

Loanword from Sanskrit and Old Javanese

Balinese have many loanwords from Sanskrit and Old Javanese. In general, the Balinese orthography in Balinese script preserve the original orthography. The preservation of original orthography result on several rules:
# assimilation rule, which based on articulation rule (Kalvi / Shiksha),
# () rule, which the word is spelled based on the source,
# () rule, which several words has doubled consonant.

Assimilation

Assimilation in Balinese occurs within the conjuncts/consonant clusters. 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:
* assimilated into �if succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster ''nc'' and ''nj'' . For example, word is written as (), not written as ().
* assimilated into �if succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster ''sc'' . For example, word is written as (), not written as ().
* assimilated into ʒif succeeded by palatal consonants, such as consonant cluster ''dny'' . For example, word is written as (), not written as ().
* assimilated into �if preceded by retroflex consonants, such as consonant cluster ''rn'' . For example, word is written as (), not written as ().
* assimilated into �if succeeded by retroflex consonants, such as consonant cluster ''st'' (ṣṭ) and ''sn'' (ṣṇ) . For example, word (, lie) is written as (), not written as ().
* assimilated into if succeeded by labial consonants. For example, word is written as (), not written as ().

Liquid Consonant-Schwa Combination

Liquid consonant, and may not be combined with (''pepet'', schwa) �as and . These combination, rě əand lě ə should be written as (''re repa'') and (''le lenga''). Word ''kěrěng'' (lit. eat a lot) and ''lekad'' are written as and . While combination of (''gantungan'' and (''pepet'') is possible as in (''bleganjur''), combination of (''cakra'' or ''gantungan'' and ''pepet'' is not allowed. If the combination follows a word which ends in a consonant, (''gempelan re repa'') may be used as in (''Pak Rěrěh'', Mr. Rěrěh). If the combination is in a word, (''guwung macelek'') may be used instead as in (''Krěsna'', Krishna).

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

The Sasak language, spoken in Lombok Island east of Bali, is related to Balinese, is written in a version of the Balinese script known as ''Aksara Sasak'', which is influenced by the Javanese script and is given additional characters for loanwords of foreign origin.

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.

Bali Simbar 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 was 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 Noto Sans Balinese from Google. However, Noto Sans Balinese exhibits several critical flaws, 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 (''tedung''), 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:

Sample texts

Article 1 of the ''

Universal Declaration of Human Rights''

;Balinese script

;Romanised

;English
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Gallery

File:Bible printed with Balinese script.jpg, Page from a Bible printed with Balinese script
File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Geschrift op lontarblad TMnr 1534-8b.jpg, Balinese palm-leaf manuscript
File:Pura Puseh 05153.jpg, Sign at Pura Puseh Temple, Batuan, Bali
File:JL DIPONEGORO 200507.jpg, Street sign in Singaraja, written in Latin and Balinese script
File:Sign of Klungkung Regent's Office.JPG, Klungkung Regent's Office sign
File:Date on a plaque in Jimbaran.jpg, A date in Latin and Balinese script

References

Further reading

*
*

External links

Outline of Balines script
at BASAbali.org
* Entry o

a
Omniglot.com -- A guide to writing systems



Balinese character picker
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Brahmic scripts
Balinese language
Indonesian scripts
Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
Writing systems without word boundaries