Kulitan, also known as súlat Kapampángan and pamagkulit, is one of the various indigenous suyat writing systems in the Philippines. It was used for writing Kapampangan, a language mainly spoken in

Central Luzon Central Luzon (; ; ; ; ), designated as Region III, is an administrative region in the Philippines. The region comprises seven provinces: Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga (with its capital, San Fernando City serving as the re ...

, until it was gradually replaced by the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

. Kulitan is an abugida, or an alphasyllabary — a segmental writing system in wherein consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit and possess an inherent vowel sound that can be altered with use of diacritical marks. There is a proposal to encode the script in Unicode by Anshuman Pandey, from the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. There are also proposals to revive the script by teaching it in Kapampangan-majority public and private schools.

History

While the precise origins of ''kulitan'' are uncertain, it ultimately derives from the

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

n Brāhmī script. Pampanga had already developed special shapes for four letters by the early 1600s, different from the ones used elsewhere in the Spanish colony. What is used today, however, is a modernized version of the ancient script that employs consonant stacking,Modern derivations of historical scripts are not unusual, with two of the latest being the Saurashtra and New Tai Lü scripts. The

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

scripts themselves had been derived from the Greek. bringing it closer to other

Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

such as Burmese, Khmer and Tibetan. Philippine nationalists of Pampangan ethnicity, such as Aurelio Tolentino and Zoilo Hilario, had employed ''kulitan'' in their writings in their efforts to expel the Spaniards and repel the invading Americans. There are currently active attempts to revive the use of the script.

Structure

The indigenous characters were recorded as ''culit'' by the early 17th and 18th century Spanish lexicographers (Benavente, 1699 and Bergaño, 1732). This served as inspiration for the name "Kulitan" which was recently coined to refer to the modern writing system. The ordinary folks simply called them ''Súlat Kapampángan'' to distinguish them from the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

. Kulitan is made up of ''Indûng Súlat,'' or the "progenitor" (literally "mother") characters, and the ''Anak Súlat,'' or the "offspring" (literally "child") 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.

Direction of writing

Kulitan is currently the only indigenous script in the Philippines that is written and read vertically from top to bottom and from right to left. In contrast, the Surat Mangyan, Hanunóo and Buhid scripts are written vertically from bottom to top and from left to right but read in any orientation. Handwritten samples and signatures found in 17th century land deeds at the University of Santo Tomas Archives indicate that Kulitan was rarely written vertically.

References

External links

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Siuálâ ding Meángûbié on Kulitan: The Indigenous Kapampangan ScriptNordenx on Súlat Kapampángan: Orthography, Typography, Fonts, and Calligraphy

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