
Eskayan is the
constructed script of the auxiliary
Eskayan language
Eskayan is an artificial auxiliary language of the Eskaya people of Bohol, an island province of the Philippines. It is grammatically Boholano, the native language of Bohol, with a substituted lexicon. While Eskayan has no mother-tongue speak ...
of the island of
Bohol in the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
. Like
Yugtun and
Fox script
Fox (known by a variety of different names, including Mesquakie (Meskwaki), Mesquakie-Sauk, Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo, Sauk-Fox, and Sac and Fox) is an Algonquian language, spoken by a thousand Meskwaki, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations i ...
, it is based on cursive
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
. The script was developed approximately 1920–1937. "Although the script is used for representing Visayan (Cebuano)—a widely used language of the southern Philippines—its privileged role is in the written reproduction of a constructed utopian language, referred to as Eskayan or Bisayan Declarado... the Eskayan language and its script are used by approximately 550 people for restricted purposes in the southeast of the island of Bohol."
[Kelly, Piers. 2015. Introducing the Eskaya Writing System: A Complex Messianic Script from the Southern Philippines. ''Australian Journal of Linguistics'' Volume 36, Issue 1: 131-163.]
Eskayan has letters for V, CV, VC, and CCV syllables (where CCV is either CrV or ClV). For CVC, the final consonant is written with a subscript character. A basic subset of the script, the 46-character ''abidiha'', is mixed alphabetic/syllabic; the first 25 letters are alphabetic or function as either a consonant or a syllable ending in /i/ (the Spanish name of the letter). The full syllabary, or ''simplit'', comprises about 1,065 characters, the precise number depending on the text, with some rendering syllables which do not actually occur in the language.
[Kelly, Piers. 2012. "Your word against mine: How a rebel language and script of the Philippines was created, suppressed, recovered and contested." ''The Australian Journal of Anthropology'' 23 (3):357-3]
/ref>
References
Relevant literature
*Sheeryn T, Bojos, Pacaña Niña Mea S, and Ramos Charmen D. 2018. "Demystifying the Magic of Eskaya Writing System in Duero, Bohol, Philippines." ''Asia Pacific Journal of Multidiclipinary Research'' 4.1:60-71.
External links
Eskayan script at Omniglot:
132 syllables, plus digits
The ''abidiha'', numerals, and punctuation
{{list of writing systems
Auxiliary and educational artificial scripts