Pegon script

Pegon ( Javanese and Sundanese: , ; also known as , , Madurese: , ''Abjâd Pèghu'') is a modified Arabic script used to write the Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese languages, as an alternative to the Latin script or the Javanese script and the Old Sundanese script. It was used in a variety of applications, from religion, to diplomacy, to poetry. But today particularly, it is used for religious (Islamic) writing and poetry, particularly in writing commentaries of the Qur'an. Pegon includes letters that are not present in Modern Standard Arabic. Pegon has been studied far less than its Jawi counterpart which is used for Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau.

In the past few decades, the Indonesian language has grown in its prominence and role as the national language of Indonesia. Thus, publishing institutions associated with religious schools have further developed new teaching material, in order to expand the use of Pegon script to Indonesian language as well. Indonesian language, being a variety of Malay, has also been written by the sister script of Pegon, Jawi.

Etymology

The word ''Pegon'' originated from the Javanese word , meaning "deviate", due to the practice of writing the Javanese language with Arabic script, which was considered unconventional by Javanese people.

History

One of the earliest dated examples of the usage of Pegon may be ''Masa'il al-ta'lim'', a work on Islamic law written in Arabic with interlinear translation and marginal commentary in Javanese. The manuscript is dated 1623 and written on , a paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree.

Letters

Pegon uses the original letters of the Arabic script plus an additional seven letters to represent native Javanese sounds not present in Arabic: , , , , , , and . One additional letter is used in foreign loanwords . These new letters are formed by the addition of dots to base letter forms. Pegon is not standardized and variation can be seen in how these additional letters are represented, most commonly in the position of the dots (above or below) and the number of dots (one, two or three).
In more recent teaching material, additional letters have been added in order to use the script for writing Indonesian language.

Representation of vowels

Vowel diacritics

Arabic script is an abjad, meaning that for the most part, only consonants are written. Arabic has three vowels, which may be short or long. There are three letters in Arabic () that can also represent long vowels, but in general, short vowel diacritics are only used in religious texts and texts meant for beginner learners. The phonology of Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese is quite different. There are six vowels, and no marking of vowel length. So, the script has been adapted by using the vowel diacritics in conjuncton with , and to fully represent the vowels of the languages of Java.Jamalin, F., & Rahman, A. A. (2021). Arabic-Java Writing System: How Javanese Language Adopts Arabic Script. Izdihar: Journal of Arabic Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature, 4(1), 43–58
https://doi.org/10.22219/jiz.v4i1.11337PDF

Archive

The prevalence of diacritic marking in Pegon varies from marking every letter, to being present only to differentiate particular vowel sounds. A version of the script which uses few diacritics, is called ''bare'' or ''bald'' (). To a fluent reader, the base letters are often sufficient to recognise word, rendering the diacritics unnecessary. So, for example, the word Indonesia may be written fully vocalised, ) or bare (). It is increasingly common in printed books to only consistently use the e-pepêt, with the other diacritics only used when disambiguation is needed.

Full marking of letters is common in most formal texts, including religious texts and historic diplomatic manuscripts.

Syllables

A vowel at the beginning of a word is indicated by the letter ''alif'' , plus diacritic, and a follow-up letter or if required. If present, the follow-up letter is written with a sukun to indicate that it is part of the first syllable and not the start of a new one.
A vowel following a consonant (such as the letter in the example below), a following vowel is indicated by diacritics but without the letter alif.

Consonant clusters

In pegon, consonant clusters are written in two ways. In clusters that consist of a nasal consonant followed by a liquid consonant, such as r l or �l or of an obstruent consonant followed by a plosive consonant, such as r l or y the first consonant is modified by an epenthetic e-pepet .

When a consonant cluster consists of a nasal consonant followed by a plosive consonant, like j b or d a prothetic alif is added to the beginning of the cluster.

Vowel sequences

Vowel sequences follow certain general conventions. Variations besides these are also commonly seen in various books and manuscripts.

Reduplication

In Pegon script, reduplication is represented with a numeral ٢ or a hyphen. If the word has a prefix, the duplicated base word is simply repeated after a hyphen. Otherwise, a ٢ indicates that the word is reduplicated. If the word has a suffix, the ٢ is placed between the base word and the suffix.

Sundanese Pégon

The Sundanese language has a slightly different system in writing Pegon compared to its Javanese equivalent. While Javanese Pegon has extra letters for writing consonants Sundanese doesn't have such as and ' , Sundanese also has the vowel / ɨ/ (''eu''), Sundanese also doesn't glottalise final k, unlike Javanese.

Consonants

While Sundanese Pegon is usually written similarly to Javanese Pegon, in some manuscripts and writings, several characters differs, specifically and , where they're written with two vertical dots instead of three.

Vowels

For word-initial vowels, the letter ''alif'' is used with the approriate diacritic mark, ''ain'' is only used if the word is an Arabic loan.

Diphthongs or stand-alone vowels next to another vowel are written with or as placeholder consonants, depends on how its pronounced, this doesn't apply to duplicate vowels, they're written with a hamzah instead.

While the letters ''wau'' and ''ra'' in Arabic are isolated letters, in Sundanese texts, these letters are often written connecting to the next letter, usually when followed by the letter ''ha'' .

Sample text

John 3:16 in Sundanese, Pegon script, vocalised

Sundanese, Latin script

Madurese Pèghu

The Madurese language has a more complicated phonology than other Javanese languages. It includes the vowel /ɤ/ (â) and a wider range of glottal stops than Javanese or Sundanese. The Arabic script as adapted to Madurese, known as Pèghu, had some differences from other versions of Pegon, and is always written vocalized using diacritics.

Consonants

Madurese has more consonants than its neighboring languages, including voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced unaspirated, but with the exception of ''dh'', aspirated consonants in Madurese Pèghu are represented by the same letters as their unaspirated counterparts.

Vowels

Vowels at the beginning of a word are indicated by the letter ''alif'' or ''ain'' with the appropriate diacritic, and a follow-up letter , , or , if required. Usually, this follow-up letter is written with a zero-vowel diacritic (sukūn), to indicate that it is part of the first syllable, and not part of a new one.

Comparison of Pegon and Jawi

The orthographic rules of Jawi and Pegon differ, with Jawi spelling being much more standardised than Pegon. Pegon tends to write all vowel sounds of native words explicitly, either with full letters or diacritics, whereas Jawi spelling sometimes omits ''alif'' in certain positions where an would be pronounced, and other vowel sounds may not be written explicitly.

For those additional letters representing sounds not present in Arabic, some letters have the same appearance in both Jawi and Pegon, while others differ. Pegon also has two additional letters for sounds native to Javanese which are not present in Malay. Also the form of ''kaf'' used differs between the two varieties with Pegon using the Arabic form, while Jawi uses the Persian form.

Transliteration

The United States Library of Congress published a romanization standard of Jawi and Pegon in 2012.

Sample text

;Indonesian in Pegon script

;Indonesian in Latin Script

;English
His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of God to all creatures, whatever is told by His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad is the real truth. Therefore all creatures have to corroborate and follow His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad.

See also

*Jawi script

Footnotes

References

* On Pegon Script for Javanese language: Jamalin, F., & Rahman, A. A. (2021). Arabic-Java Writing System: How Javanese Language Adopts Arabic Script. Izdihar: Journal of Arabic Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature, 4(1), 43–58
https://doi.org/10.22219/jiz.v4i1.11337PDF

Archive

* On Pegon Script for Sundanese language: Apriyanto, Agung, Ruhaliah Nunuy Nurjanah, and Ruhaliah. (2021) "Structure of the Sundanese Language in the Pegon Script". Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2021)
https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211119.006PDF

Archive

* Religious book featuring Arabic, with word-by-word Madurese language translation: Syeikh Khalil bin Abdul Latif al-Bankalani al-Maduri (Bangkalan, Madura). (1988) "Al-Matn al-Shareef"
https://archive.org/details/SyaikhonaKholil/mode/2up
*Gallop, A. T. (2015). A Jawi sourcebook for the study of Malay palaeography and orthography. ''Indonesia and the Malay World'', 43(125), 13–171.
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{{List of writing systems

Arabic alphabets
Indonesian scripts
Javanese language
Sundanese language