Tagbanwa script

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Tagbanwa is one of the scripts indigenous to the Philippines, used by the Tagbanwa and the Palawan people as their ethnic writing system.^[1]

Tagbanwa script ᝦᝪᝯ
Script type	Abugida
Time period	c. 1300–present
Direction	Left-to-right
Region	Palawan Island
Languages	Palawanic languages
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic script[a] Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brahmi script Pallava script Kawi script Baybayin Tagbanwa script
Sister systems	In the Philippines Baybayin Buhid script Hanunó'o script Kulitan In Indonesian Archipelago Balinese Batak Javanese Lontara Sundanese Rencong Rejang Bima Makasar
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Tagb (373), ​Tagbanwa
Unicode
Unicode alias	Tagbanwa
Unicode range	U+1760–U+177F

The Tagbanwa languages (Aborlan, Calamian and Central), which are Austronesian languages with about 8,000-25,000^[2] total speakers in the central and northern regions of Palawan, are dying out as the younger generations of Tagbanwa are learning and using non-traditional languages such as Cuyonon and Tagalog, thus becoming less knowledgeable of their own indigenous cultural heritage. There are proposals to revive the script by teaching it in public and private schools with Tagbanwa populations.^[3]

The Tagbanwa script was used in the Philippines until the 17th century. Closely related to Baybayin, it is believed to have come from the Kawi script of Java, Bali and Sumatra, which in turn, descended from the Pallava script, one of the southern Indian scripts derived from Brahmi.^[4]

Tagbanwa is an alphasyllabary or abugida in which each letter represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and an inherent vowel /a/, a feature that it shares with many related scripts from SE Asia as they derive from variants of the Brahmic scripts of India. Similar to these scripts, vowels other than /a/ are indicated by the addition of a diacritic above (for /i/) or below (for /u/) the letter.^[5] Lone vowels are represented by their own, independent letters, thus /a/, /i/ and /u/ since there are only three. Syllables ending in a consonant are written without the final consonant.^[6] Tagbanwa is distinguished from Baybayin by the shapes of several letters, most notably ‹ka› and ‹wa› that are markedly different from other varieties.^[1]

Tagbanwa is traditionally written on bamboo in vertical columns from bottom to top and left to right. However, it is read from left to right in horizontal lines.^[4]

Tagbanwa writing makes use of single (᜵) and double (᜶) punctuation marks.^[6]

In the 20th century, this script was adopted from the Tagbanwa by the Palawan people further south in the island.^[1] They call this alphabet Ibalnan and the vowel mark an ulit.^[7]

Tagbanwa script was added to the Unicode Standard in March, 2002 with the release of version 3.2.

The Unicode block for Tagbanwa is U+1760–U+177F:

• Suyat
• Baybayin
• Buhid script
• Hanunó'o script
• Kulitan
• Kawi script
• Filipino orthography

• Tagbanwa font by Samuel Thibault (2008)
• Noto Sans Tagbanwa (Source on GitHub)

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