Kulitan alphabet
| Kulitan Pamagkulit, Súlat Kapampángan |
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|---|---|
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| Type | |
| Languages | Kapampangan |
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Time period
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c. 1300–present |
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Parent systems
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Sister systems
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Balinese Batak Baybayin Buhid Javanese Lontara Old Sundanese Rencong Rejang Tagbanwa |
Kulitan is one of various indigenous writing systems in the Philippines. It is used for writing the Kapampangan language spoken in the provinces of Pampanga, Tarlac, Bataan and Nueva Ecija.
Kulitan is an abugida or alphasyllabary writing system, where the consonantal characters possess a default vowel sound that can be altered with use of diacritical marks. Kulitan, like other scripts in Southeast Asia, is an Indian-inspired script.
There is a proposal to encode the script in Unicode by Anshuman Pandey, from the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley.
The indigenous characters were recorded as culit by the early 17th and 18th century Spanish lexicographers (Benavente, 1699 and Bergaño, 1732) and the whole writing system was therefore called kulitan. The ordinary folks simply called them Súlat Kapampángan to distinguish them from the Latin Alphabet script.
Kulitan is basically made up of Indûng Súlat or the "progenitor"(lit. "mother") characters and the Anak Súlat or the "offspring" characters. The Indûng Súlat are the base characters with the unaltered inherent vowel sounds. They are the building blocks of Súlat Kapampángan. Indûng súlat gives birth to Anak Súlat or "offspring" characters whenever their inherent vowel sound has been altered by a ligature or a diacritical mark.
The siuálâ or vowels in Kulitan are usually written as garlit or diacritical marks placed above or below an individual Indûng Súlat or "mother" character. Ligatures are also sometimes used to further lengthen these vowel sounds or represent the monophthongized diphthongs AI (E) and AU (O). A glyph with a diacritical mark or ligature attached to it is an Anak Súlat or "offspring" character. A consonant can lose its following vowel if written at the right side of the preceding consonant.
The recital order of the Indûng Súlat characters are A, I, U, E, O, GA, KA, NGA, TA, DA, NA, LA, SA, MA, PA, BA.
Historic:
, Traditional:
, Modern:
...
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