He also made an even more surprising discovery: “A few years later (after the Spaniards sent a baybayin letter to Borneo), Tagalog conspirators hoping to expel their Spanish invaders communicated among themselves and their Bornean allies in ( baybayin ) writing, and even sent a letter to Japan. In contrast to Morga’s statement, American historian William Henry Scott discovered some records stating that natives did not know how to write, even the datus or chieftains. In his memoirs written in the 1600s, de Morga stated that natives from Luzon and surrounding islands wrote splendidly using the native script, and that only a few did not know how to write well. But upon the arrival of baybayin in 1567, the Spanish Governor-General Miguel López de Legazpi reported that “They (the Visayans) have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them.” However, in 1521, Italian explorer Antonio Pigafetta wrote that the people of the Visayas were illiterate. The extent of baybayin as the Philippines’ official writing system varied from island to island from the 16 th to the early 17th centuries. Baybayin is derived from the Tagalog word which means land beside the sea.) This was the same observation Spanish soldier and lawyer Antonio de Morga made during his visit to the Philippines in1609. (Our ancestors’ ancient alphabet consist of three vowels and fourteen consonants. In an interview with Roy Cagalingan, a historian from the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino, he formally defined baybayin as the “ sinaunang alpabeto ng ating mga ninuno na naglalaman ng tatlong patinig at labing-apat na katinig, na nagmula sa salitang baybay ng mga Tagalog, na nangangahulugang lupain sa tabi ng dagat”.

As an alpha-syllabic script, its specific characters can either be a single consonant or vowel, or a syllable. Primarily, baybayin was used by inhabitants in the Luzon and Visayas regions. However, in the 13th century, Malaysian and Indonesian cultures influenced the writing system in the Philippines, leading us to discover baybayin. Instead, they relied on oral tradition or word-of-mouth as a way of communication. In ancient times, people living in the Philippines did not have any kind of writing system. Pre-Colonial Period: The Birth of Baybayin In the pre-colonial period, baybayin was the writing script of Filipinos living in different islands.īaybayin for dalandan, pinya and atis (photo from baybayinart )

Thus, its cultural importance and possible inclusion in the current curriculum should be considered. Most of the children living in this era have forgotten the historical significance of our native alphabet.

Filipino alphabet abakada