Hanunoo (), also rendered Hanunó'o, is one of the scripts indigenous to the Philippines and is used by the Mangyan peoples of southern Mindoro to write the Hanunó'o language. It is an

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

descended from the

Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

, closely related to Sulat Tagalog, and is famous for being written vertical but written upward, rather than downward as nearly all other scripts (however, it is read horizontally left to right). It is usually written on

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

by incising characters with a knife. Most known Hanunó'o inscriptions are relatively recent because of the perishable nature of bamboo. It is therefore difficult to trace the history of the script.

Structure

Fifteen basic characters of the Hanunó'o script each represent one of the fifteen consonants followed by the inherent vowel . Other syllables are written by modifying each of these characters with one of two

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 ...

''(kudlit)'' which change the vowel sound to /i/ or /u/. The glyph for /la/ is the same as that for /ra/ but /li/ and /ri/ are distinct, as are /lu/ and /ru/. There are three independent vowels (phonetically preceded by a

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

, transliterated as ''q''). Final consonants are not written, and so must be determined from context. Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma, who went to the Philippines from the Netherlands in the 1950s, introduced the ''pamudpod''

virama Virama ( ्, ) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either # halanta, hasanta or explicit vir ...

() to indicate a syllable final consonant. The pamudpod is also used in modern

Baybayin Baybayin (,), also sometimes erroneously referred to as alibata, is a Suyat, Philippine script widely used primarily in Luzon during the 16th and 17th centuries and prior to write Tagalog language, Tagalog and to a lesser extent Visayan lang ...

. The script makes use of single ( ) and double ( ) danda punctuation characters.

Direction of writing

Hanunoo-Mangyan Alternative Letters Ra Wu

The Hanunó'o script is conventionally written away from the body (from bottom to top) in columns which go from left to right. Within the columns, characters may have any orientation but the orientation must be consistent for all characters in a text. The characters are typically vertical with the /i/ diacritic on the left and the /u/ on the right, or horizontal with the /i/ on the top and the /u/ on the bottom. Left-handed people often write in mirror image, which reverses both the direction of writing (right to left instead of left to right) and the characters themselves.

Learning the script

Young Hanunó'o men and women (called ''layqaw'') learn the script primarily in order to memorize love songs. The goal is to learn as many songs as possible, and using the script to write the songs facilitates this process. The script is also used to write letters, notifications, and other documents. The characters are not memorized in any particular order; learners typically begin by learning how to write their name. Literacy among the Hanunó'o people is high despite a lack of formal education in the script.

Examples

The Hanunó'o people's poetry, Ambahan, consists of seven syllable lines inscribed onto bamboo segments, nodes, musical instruments or other materials using the tip of a knife. Charcoal and other black pigments are then used to make the characters stand out. The poems represent a Mangyan's personal thoughts, feelings or desires. It is recited during social occasions (without accompaniment), in courting ceremonies or when requested. ;Hanunoo text ;Hanunoo text with ''pamudpod'' ;Transliteration ;English You my friend, dearest of all, thinking of you makes me sad; rivers deep are in between forests vast keep us apart But thinking of you with love; as if you are here nearby standing, sitting at my side.

Unicode

The

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

range for Hanunó'o is U+1720–U+173F:

References

External links

The Entire Hanunóo script
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanuno'o Script Brahmic scripts Philippine scripts