Standard Sundanese script (''Aksara Sunda Baku'', ) is a traditional writing system used by

Sundanese people The Sundanese (; ) are an Austronesian people, Austronesian ethnic group native to Java in Indonesia, primarily West Java. They number approximately 42 million and form Ethnic groups in Indonesia, Indonesia's second most populous ethnic group. T ...

to write

Sundanese language Sundanese ( ; , Sundanese script: , ) is an Austronesian language spoken in Java, primarily by the Sundanese. It has approximately 32 million native speakers in the western third of Java; they represent about 15% of Indonesia's total pop ...

. It is built based on Old Sundanese script (''Aksara Sunda Kuno'') which was used from the 14th to the 18th centuries.

History

Old Sundanese was developed based on the Pallava script of India, and was used from the 14th until the 18th centuries. The last manuscript written in Old Sundanese script was ''Carita Waruga Guru.'' From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Sundanese was mostly spoken and not written. Javanese and Pegon scripts were used to write Sundanese during this period. In 1996, the government of West Java announced a plan to introduce an official Sundanese script, and in October 1997, the Old Sundanese script was chosen and renamed to ''Aksara Sunda.''

Typology

The standardized script has 32 basic characters-- seven vowels, 23 consonants, and thirteen phonetic diacriticals (). There are also numerals from zero to nine.

Consonants

Each consonant () carries an inherent vowel 'a', so that each consonant letter is pronounced as a syllable. The original eighteen consonants are ''ka-ga-nga'', ''ca-ja-nya'', ''ta-da-na'', ''pa-ba-ma'', ''ya-ra-la'', ''wa-sa-ha''. An additional five consonants, ''fa-va-qa-xa-za'' have been added in order to improve the script as a tool for recording the development of the Sundanese language, especially regarding the adoption of foreign words and sounds. The new glyphs have been developed through re-use of letters found in the old Sundanese script. For example, the letters ''fa'' and ''va'' are variants of Old Sundanese ''pa''; ''qa'' and ''xa'' are variants of Old Sundanese ''ka''; and ''za'' is a variant of Old Sundanese ''ja''. There are two non-standard consonants, ''kha'' and ''sha,'' used for transcribing the Arabic consonants خ and ش.

Vowels

There are seven independent vowels, ''a, é, i, o, u, e,'' and ''eu'', each of which has an independent form and a ''rarangkén'' or diacritic. A basic consonant-vowel syllable is formed by adding a vowel diacritic to a consonant. The vowel diacritic replaces the consonant's inherent 'a' or, in the case of the " killer stroke" () removes the vowel entirely, creating an isolated consonant.

Consonant diacritics

Additional diacritics are used to alter the consonants of a syllable.

Numerals

In texts, numbers are written surrounded by dual pipes , ... , , for example, the year 2020 is written , , .

Punctuation

In modern usage, Latin punctuation is used. Old Sundanese, though, was written using its own set of punctuation symbols. Sequences such as , , which contains a , and , which contains a , are used to mark liturgical texts. , which contains a , denoted a historical text. is also sometimes used as a full stop, with acting as a comma. was also used as a comma. Ciamis_Sundanese_lexicon_kanjat

The punctuation symbols resembling letters with stripes (, , and ) originated as versions of the letters , , and one half of the letter . Another symbol of unclear meaning is the , based on the archaic syllable .EVERSON, Michael. Proposal for encoding additional Sundanese characters for Old Sundanese in the UCS. Available a

September 5th, 2009.

Sample text

Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Unicode

Sundanese script was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in April 2008 with the release of version 5.1. In version 6.3, the support of ''pasangan'' and some characters from Old Sundanese script were added.

Blocks

The Unicode block for Sundanese is U+1B80–U+1BBF. The Unicode block for Sundanese Supplement is U+1CC0–U+1CCF.

Gallery

File:Naskah Sunda Lontar.jpg, A Sundanese ''lontar'' manuscript written in the Sundanese script. File:Carita Waruga Guru.jpg, The first page from manuscript of Carita Waruga Guru which use the Old Sundanese script and the Old Sundanese language.

References

External links

Kairaga - Comprehensive information site regarding Sundanese font developing effort
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Sundanese Keyboard - ᮘᮞ ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ (''basa sunda'') Keyboard
at branah.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Sundanese Script 14th-century introductions Brahmic scripts Indonesian scripts Sundanese culture Sundanese language Sundanese script