Balinese alphabet

Balinese
Type	Abugida
Languages	Balinese, Sasak
Time period	c. 1000–present
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brāhmī Pallava Old Kawi Balinese
Sister systems	Batak Baybayin Kulitan Buhid Hanunó'o Javanese Lontara Old Sundanese Rencong Rejang Tagbanwa
ISO 15924	Bali, 360
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Balinese
Unicode range	U+1B00–U+1B7F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

The Balinese alphabet (Balinese: Aksara Bali) is an abugida that was used to write the Balinese language, an Austronesian language spoken by about three million people on the Indonesian island of Bali. The use of the Balinese script has mostly been replaced by the Latin script. Although it is learned in school, few people use it. It is mostly used in temples and for religious writings.

The Balinese script was derived from the Old Kawi script, which ultimately derived from the Brāhmī script, the root of all the Indic and Southeast Asian abugidas. The abugida consists of 47 characters, 14 of which are vowels (aksara suara), and the remaining 33 are consonants (aksara wianjana).

Brāhmī
The Brahmic script and its descendants
Northern Brahmic Kusan Tocharian Meitei Mayek Gupta Śāradā Landa Old Kashmiri Gurmukhī Khojki Khudawadi Takri Dogri Chameali Siddhaṃ Tibetan ’Phagspa Hangul (partial) Lepcha Limbu Nāgarī Devanāgarī Modi Nandināgarī Gujarati Kaithi Eastern Nagari Assamese Bengali Anga Tirhuta Nepal Bhujimol Prachalit Nepal Ranjana Soyombo
Southern Brahmic Tamil Brahmi Vatteluttu Kolezhuthu Tamil Pallava Grantha Malayalam Tulu Sinhala Dhives Akuru Saurashtra Khmer Lao Thai Cham Old Kawi Balinese Javanese Baybayin Batak Buhid Hanunó'o Tagbanwa Sundanese Lontara Rejang Mon Burmese Ojhopath Tanchangya Kalinga Oriya Bhattiprolu Script Kadamba Kannada Telugu Tai Le New Tai Lue Ahom

Independent letters

Vowels

Vowels (aksara suara) can be written as independent letters, or by using a variety of diacritical marks (pangangge). The independent forms are used when the vowels appear in initial position. They are described in the following list:

Aksara suara (Vowels)
Warga (Place of articulation)	Aksara suara hresua (Short vowels)			Name	Aksara suara dirgha (Long vowels)
	Symbol	Transliteration	IPA		Symbol	Transliteration	IPA
Kantya (Guttural)		A	[a]	A kara		Ā	[ɑː]
Talawya (Palatal)		I	[i]	I kara		Ī	[iː]
Murdhanya (Retroflex)		Ṛ	[ɹ̩]	Ra repa		Ṝ	[ɹ̩ː]
Dantya (Dental)		Ḷ	[l̩]	La lenga		Ḹ	[l̩ː]
Osthya (Labial)		U	[u]	U kara		Ū	[uː]
Kanthya-talawya (Palato-guttural)		E	[e]; [ɛ]	E kara (E) Airsanya (Ai)		Ai	[aːi]
Kanthya-osthya (Labio-guttural)		O	[o]; [ɔ]	O kara		Au	[aːu]

Consonants

Like most abugidas, each consonant (aksara wianjana) has an inherent vowel of /a/. Other vowels are indicated by using diacritics (pangangge), which can appear above, below, to the left, or to the right of the consonant.

Aksara wianjana (Consonants)
Warga (Place of articulation)	Pancawalimukha					Ardhasuara (Semivowels)	Usma (Fricatives)	Wisarga
	Unvoiced		Voiced		Nasal
Kanthya (Guttural)	(Ka) Ka	, (Kha) Ka mahaprana	(Ga) Ga	(Gha) Ga gora	(Nga) Nga			(Ha) Ha
Talawya (Palatal)	(Ca) Ca murca	(Cha) Ca laca	(Ja) Ja	(Jha) Ja jera	(Nya) Nya	(Ya) Ya	(Śa) Sa saga
Murdhanya (Retroflex)	(Ṭa) Ta latik	(Ṭha) Ta latik	(Ḍa) Da madu m.	(Ḍha) Da madu m.	(Ṇa) Na rambat	(Ra) Ra	(Ṣa) Sa sapa
Dantya (Dental)	(Ta) Ta	(Tha) Ta tawa	(Da) Da lindung	(Dha) Da madu	(Na) Na kojong	(La) La	(Sa) Sa danti
Osthya (Labial)	(Pa) Pa	(Pha) Pa kapal	(Ba) Ba	, (Bha) Ba kembang	(Ma) Ma	(Wa) Wa

^1 The consonant ha is sometimes not pronounced. For example, hujan is pronounced ujan.
^2 The exact form of ca laca is unknown because only the appended (gantungan) form is left. However, the independent form is included in Unicode.
^3 The letter form of ja jera is exactly the same as the independent vowel airsanya.
^4 The unaspirated and the aspirated consonants share the same letter. However, the diacritic tedung can be attached to the aspirated one to differentiate the two.
^5 Da madu murdhanya
^6 Very seldom used
^7 Actually an alveolar consonant, but classified as dental by tradition
^8 The former of the two letter forms is more frequently used.

Among the 33 consonants letters above, only 18 are commonly used for writing the Balinese language:

The rest are mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords.

Diacritics

Diacritics (pangangge, pronounced /pəŋaŋɡe/, also known as sandhangan when referring to the Javanese script) are symbols that cannot stand by itself. When they are attached to the independent letters, they affect the pronunciation. The three types of diacritics are pangangge suara, pangangge tengenan (pronounced /t̪əŋənan/) and pangangge aksara.

Pangangge suara

If a consonant letter is embellished with a pangangge suara, its vowel is changed. For example, the letter na with ulu becomes ni; ka with suku becomes ku. The diacritics in this category is summarized in the following list:

Pangangge suara
Warga (Place of articulation)	Symbol	Transliteration	IPA	Name
Kanthya (Guttural)		ě	[ə]	Pepet
		ā	[ɑː]	Tedung
Talawya (Palatal)		i	[i]	Ulu
		ī	[iː]	Ulu sari
Osthya (Labial)		u	[u]	Suku
		ū	[uː]	Suku ilut
Kanthya-talawya (Palato-guttural)		é	[e]; [ɛ]	Taling
		ai	[aːi]	Taling detya
Kanthya-osthya (Labio-guttural)		o	[o]; [ɔ]	Taling tedung
		au	[aːu]	Taling detya matedung

Many consonants can form ligatures with tedung:

Pangangge tengenan

Pangangge tengenan, except adeg-adeg, adds a final consonant to a syllable. It can be used together with pangangge suara. For example, the letter na with bisah becomes nah; ka with suku and surang becomes kur. Adeg-adeg kills the inherent vowel /a/ in the consonant letter. Compared to Devanagari, bisah is analogous to visarga, cecek to anusvara, and adeg-adeg to virama.

Symbol	Pronunciation	Name
	/h/	Bisah
	/r/	Surang
	/ŋ/	Cecek
	-	Adeg-adeg

Pangangge aksara

Pangangge aksara is appended below consonant letters. Pangangge aksara are the appended (gantungan) forms of the ardhasuara (semivowel) consonants. Guwung macelek is the appended form of the vowel ra repa.

Symbol	Pronunciation	Name
	/ra/	Cakra/Guwung
	/rə/	Guwung macelek
	/ʋa/	Suku kembung
	/ja/	Nania

Appended letters

Adeg-adeg may not used in the middle of a sentence, so gantungan (appended letters) has to be used to kill the vowel of a consonant letter in such case. Each consonant letter has a corresponding gantungan form, and the gantungan eliminates the inherent vowel /a/ of the letter it is appended to. For example, if the letter na is appended with gantungan da, the pronunciation becomes nda.

Gantungan and pangangge (diacritic) can be applied together to a letter. However, attaching two or more gantungan to one letter is forbidden; this condition is known as tumpuk telu (three layers). Adeg-adeg may be used in the middle of a sentence to avoid such situation.

The forms of gantungan are as follows:

Gantungan/Gempelan
Warga (Place of articulation)	Pancawalimukha					Ardhasuara (Semivowels)	Usma (Fricatives)	Wisarga
	Unvoiced		Voiced		Nasal
Kanthya (Guttural)	Ka		Ga	Ga gora	Nga			Ha
Talawya (Palatal)	Ca murca	Ca laca	Ja		Nya	Ya	Sa saga
Murdhanya (Retroflex)	Ta latik		Da madu m.		Na rambat	Ra	Sa sapa
Dantya (Dental)	Ta	Ta tawa	Da lindung	Da madu	Na kojong	La	Sa danti
Osthya (Labial)	Ba	Ba kembang	Pa	Pa kapal	Ma	Wa

Numerals

Balinese numeral	Hindu numeral	Name		Balinese numeral	Hindu numeral	Name
	0	Bindu/Windu			5	Lima
	1	Siki/Besik			6	Nem
	2	Kalih/Dua			7	Pitu
	3	Tiga/Telu			8	Kutus
	4	Papat			9	Sanga/Sia

Balinese numerals are written in the same manner as Hindu numerals. For example, 25 is written with the Balinese numbers 2 and 5. If the number is written in the middle of a text, carik has to be written before and after the number to differentiate it from the text. Below is an example of how a date is written using Balinese numerals (date: 1 July 1982, location: Bali):

Balinese script	Transliteration
	Bali, 1 Juli 1982.

Other symbols

There are some special symbols in the Balinese script. Some of them are punctuation marks, and the others are religious symbols. The symbols are described in the following list:

Symbol	Name	Remarks
	Carik or Carik Siki.	Written in the middle of a sentence, like a comma (,). Also, written surrounding numerals to differentiate them from the text.
	Carik Kalih or Carik Pareren	Written at the end of a sentence, like a full stop (.).
	Carik pamungkah	Functions like a colon (:).
	Pasalinan	Used at the end of a prose, letter, or verse.
	Panten or Panti	Used at the beginning of a prose, letter, or verse.
	Pamada	Used at the beginning of religious texts. This symbol is a ligature of the letters ma, nga, ja, and pa, forming the word mangajapa, which roughly means "praying for safety".
	Ongkara	Sacred symbol of Hinduism. This symbol is pronounced "Ong" or "Om".

Similarities with the Javanese script

The Balinese and Javanese scripts are essentially typographic variants.

Balinese script	Javanese script

Unicode

Balinese script was added to the Unicode Standard in July, 2006 with the release of version 5.0.

The Unicode block for Balinese is U+1B00 ... U+1B7F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Balinese Unicode.org chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1B0x

ᬀ

ᬁ

ᬂ

ᬃ

ᬄ

ᬅ

ᬆ

ᬇ

ᬈ

ᬉ

ᬊ

ᬋ

ᬌ

ᬍ

ᬎ

ᬏ

U+1B1x

ᬐ

ᬑ

ᬒ

ᬓ

ᬔ

ᬕ

ᬖ

ᬗ

ᬘ

ᬙ

ᬚ

ᬛ

ᬜ

ᬝ

ᬞ

ᬟ

U+1B2x

ᬠ

ᬡ

ᬢ

ᬣ

ᬤ

ᬥ

ᬦ

ᬧ

ᬨ

ᬩ

ᬪ

ᬫ

ᬬ

ᬭ

ᬮ

ᬯ

U+1B3x

ᬰ

ᬱ

ᬲ

ᬳ

᬴

ᬵ

ᬶ

ᬷ

ᬸ

ᬹ

ᬺ

ᬻ

ᬼ

ᬽ

ᬾ

ᬿ

U+1B4x

ᭀ

ᭁ

ᭂ

ᭃ

᭄

ᭅ

ᭆ

ᭇ

ᭈ

ᭉ

ᭊ

ᭋ

U+1B5x

᭐

᭑

᭒

᭓

᭔

᭕

᭖

᭗

᭘

᭙

᭚

᭛

᭜

᭝

᭞

᭟

U+1B6x

᭠

᭡

᭢

᭣

᭤

᭥

᭦

᭧

᭨

᭩

᭪

᭫

᭬

᭭

᭮

᭯

U+1B7x

᭰

᭱

᭲

᭳

᭴

᭵

᭶

᭷

᭸

᭹

᭺

᭻

᭼

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

Gallery

• 

  Sign in Balinese and Latin scripts at Pura Puseh Temple in Batuan, Bali

• 

  Street sign in Singaraja, written in both Latin and Balinese scripts

• 

  Balinese palm-leaf writing, c. 1800

References

• Tinggen, I Nengah. 1993. Pedoman Perubahan Ejaan Bahasa Bali dengan Huruf Latin dan Huruf Bali. Singaraja: UD. Rikha.
• Surada, I Made. 2007. Kamus Sanskerta-Indonesia. Surabaya: Penerbit Paramitha.
• Simpen, I Wayan. Pasang Aksara Bali. Diterbitkan oleh Dinas Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Provinsi Daerah Tingkat I Bali.

External links

• Entry on Balinese at Omniglot.com -- A guide to writing systems
• Computerization of Balinese Script
• Michael Everson, Coding of Balinese Script to Unicode