Buri Wolio ( Wolio: ) is an

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

modified to write Wolio, a language spoken in and around Baubau, the capital of

Buton Buton (also Butung, Boeton or Button) is an island in Indonesia located off the southeast peninsula of Sulawesi. It covers roughly 4,727 square kilometers in area, or about the size of Madura; it is the 129th List of islands by area, largest is ...

, Southeast Sulawesi,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

. Generally, this script is same with Jawi script, except in Buri Wolio,

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

sounds are symbolized. This script has 35 letters, 28 letters from Arabic alphabet and 7 additional letters similar to those in

Jawi script Jawi (; ; ; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Betawi, Magindanao, Malay, Mëranaw, Minangkabau, Tausūg, Ternate and many other languages in Southeast Asia. Jawi ...

to represent sounds not found in Arabic. Of these, 22 are used for writing of Wolio language, while 13 are reserved for writing loanwords of Arabic (and European) origin. Buri Wolio is similar in most aspects to

, except that in addition to the 3

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

in Arabic and Jawi, Buri Wolio has two additional diacritics for expressing the /e/ and /u/ vowel sounds. It is unclear when Buri Wolio script was first created and used, but according to the oldest Buton manuscripts that have been found, it is estimated that this script has existed since the arrival of Islam on

Island in the 16th century. As Wolio language was the lingua franca of Sultanate of Buton, this script was used in writing ancient texts in Buton, including; texts of laws, religious texts and diplomatic letters. In addition, this script has also been used to write ''kaḃanti'' (), a traditional type of long poetry consisting of lines, each with a pair of verses. The tradition of writing kaḃanti in Buton reached its peak of popularity in the 19th century (1824–1851), namely during the reign of the 29th Sultan of Buton, Muhammad Idrus Kaimuddin. For the people of Buton, besides from being known as a sultan, he is also known as a famous scholar and poet of Buton. As a poet, he composed a lot of kaḃanti literature, especially those based on Islamic teachings. Other than Muhammad Idrus Kaimuddin, several other Butonese poets came from the royal family of Buton, such as La Ode Kobu (''Metapasina Bādia''), La Ode Nafiu (''Yarona Labuandiri''), and H. Abdul Ganiu (''Kenepulu Bula'').

Alphabet

Letters

Buri Wolio script consists of 22 primary characters, of which 15 are from Arabic Script, and 7 are new characters, made by adding dots to existing Arabic Characters, similar to characters of the

. These new characters are highlighted in the table below. There are an additional 13 characters, that are exclusively used for writing of loanwords taken from Arabic or from European languages.

Vowel Diacritics

The purpose of vowel diacritics in an

Abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

script is to give vowels to each consonants. Unlike its neighbouring relatives, Jawi and Pegon, Buri Wolio cannot be read without diacritics. The shape and position of diacritic is very important. There are 6 diacritics in Buri Wolio, which include the Sukun diacritic (zero-vowel), the 3 diacritics inherited from Arabic, representing sounds /a/, /i/, and /u/, as well as two new diacritics unique to Buri Wolio, representing diacritics /e/ and /o/. All of these diacritics represent short vowel sounds. With the help of the letters "", "", or "", diacritics can also represent long vowel sounds.

Reduplication

In Buri Wolio,

Reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

is done in a manner similar to

and

Pegon script Pegon (Javanese language, Javanese and Sundanese language, Sundanese: , ; also known as , , Madurese language, Madurese: , ''Abjâd Pèghu'') is a modified Arabic script used to write the Javanese language, Javanese, Sundanese language, Sundan ...

, that is with the use of the numeral "٢" right after the base word. While suffixed, the numeral "٢" comes in between the base word and the suffix, effectively being in the middle of the word. Below are some sample words:

Sample Text

Below is a sample except of Wolio language poem ''"Kaḃanti Bunga Malati"'', which was rewritten in modern Latin Wolio Script in 2004.

References

External links

Manuskrip Buton: Keistimewaan dan Nilai Budaya

Collection of Wolio Manuscripts at the British Library

Fragments of three different manuscripts from La Ode Zaenu collection in Baubau, Digitized by DREAMSEA Project
* Peacock, A.C.S. (2019) "Arabic Manuscripts from Buton, Southeast Sulawesi, and the Literary Activities of Sultan Muḥammad ʿAydarūs (1824–1851)" in Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, Volume 10: Issue 1, pp 44–83 Brill doi:10.1163/1878464X-01001005 {{Arabic alphabets Arabic alphabets Indonesian scripts