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
Christian Cabuay, who runs this site, apparently also runs a tattoo shop - see, I told you there's something about tattoos and baybayin. Kidding aside, this site seems more attuned with pop culture than Miss Perla's. (That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's better for a thinker's site and an application site to coexist. That way, us leechers will have more sources to read from.)
Given Chris' artist background, his site is full of beautiful BEAUTIFUL pictures of things he wants to see happen, and things that are happening.
There are also baybayin tutorials and a really cool set of downloadable workbooks that I've stored in my to-do folders for future perusal. Maybe someday I'll be able to give myself a tattoo, yeah?
mts.net
I got my TrueType font download here! Not that I'll be able to use it in the next few months or so - given I can't even read baybayin yet. But I'm excited to be able to read the Doctrina Christiana - the first book printed in the Philippines - in baybayin; according to Virgilio Enriquez, whose work Pagbabangong-Dangal inspired me to come up with this site, it's exhilarating to be able to read the DC in baybayin. Someday, someday!!!
Random Thought c/o MEG's August issue:
Am I supposed to be happy that a new boyband XLR8 has popped up, signaling a music industry that's friendlier to newbies, or should I roll my eyes at its obvious attempt at copying KPop?
I totally agree.
ReplyDeleteI was learning Katakana and Hiragana before I even learned that we had baybayin.
Then while I was learning, I came across Baybayin and was really happy.
At the moment, I stopped learning japanese language and started in Baybayin.
I hope that you can read baybayin now.
You can also type baybayin here: http://baybay.in/tools/typepad.htm
ᜉᜍᜅ᜔ ᜄᜈᜒᜆᜓ :)
I also have a blog where I write in baybayin :)
About the Doctrina Christiana, at first I couldn't really understand what I was reading even though I can read baybayin, this is because i'm not used to reading in the traditional way.
But after a few practice, I find that it is much easier to read and understand. So it really all comes down to practicing :)
You'll be able to read it someday :) Don't worry, baybayin is really easy and fun to learn!
I'm glad that you are now pursuing Baybayin!
Thanks for the mention. Yes, I tend to lean towards current usage of Baybayin. Why? I'm not a historian or anthropologist. My contribution is to get the young involved in the script. My art is the candy and the books and tutorials are the veggies. Look out for my online school soon
ReplyDelete