Baybayin

Two Sundays ago, my Socio101 groupmates I got talking about Filipino culture. For our class project, we're working on the definition of Culture, how it affects individuals, how it's created, how it evolves, how it dies - if it does. Nikki - I think it was Nikki - suddenly talked about how the whole University only has one Russian professor, and how that professor, before teaching the Russian alphabet, teaches Alibata first.

To which Jau replied, in Filipino, "It's not Alibata. It's Baybayin."

Hence, my current fascination with the baybayin, the ancient writing symbol of the Filipinos in the pre-colonial era. It's not something you see often these days; outside henna tattoo shops, that is. In my org, people are more concerned with learning Hanggul and Katakana-Hiragana-Kanji than Baybayin. Which sucks, I think, because our Baybayin is - in my humble opinion - far more elegant than the two aforementioned.

Well, definitely, it's swishier, wavier.

I Blackled baybayin websites and came across a few really interesting ones. Here are the most promising ones I've visited so far:

baybayinalive.blogspot.com
Moderated by Perla Daly, this is where I got a table of the baybayin:

Miss Perla cites the source as The Ancient Script of the Philippines, but I'm going to cite her as my source. Checking the table though, I find it weird that we had a character for X, among other letters. Even weirder is the fact that it greatly resembles the integrals I despised in my Calculus class. But anyway, someday I'll read what Miss Perla has to say about this particular issue. Maybe it's a recent addition... or something.

baybayin.com

Attempting Moral Recovery

Dear Reader: 

If you've paid enough attention to my profile, you'll probably realize I'm lying about who I am. That is not my real name, nor is it my real identity - both are irrelevant to my purpose for writing this blog. Think of me as a random sample from the sea of today's Filipino teenagers: I listen to Kpop, am fascinated with pasta, enjoy watching anime, adore Harry Potter. All I know about nationalism I learned from Pilipinas tshirts and generally uninformative TV shows about the EDSA revolution. I'd like to know more about who I am as a Filipino; I'd like to have some semblance of an identity. And so I'm starting a blog to record everything I'm learning about the Philippines. 

If you wish, you may learn with me. I'd like that. It'd mean you care, too.