Balinese alphabet

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

The Balinese script, natively known as Aksara Bali and Hanacaraka, is an abugida used in the island of Bali, Indonesia, commonly for writing the Austronesian Balinese language, Old Javanese, and the liturgical language Sanskrit. With some modifications, the script is also used to write the Sasak language, used in the neighboring island of Lombok. The script is a descendant of the Brahmi script, and so has many similarities with the modern scripts of South and Southeast Asia. The Balinese script, along with the Javanese script, is considered the most elaborate and ornate among Brahmic scripts of Southeast Asia.

Though everyday use of the script has largely been supplanted by the Latin alphabet, the Balinese script has significant prevalence in many of the island's traditional ceremonies and is strongly associated with the Hindu religion. The script is mainly used today for copying lontar or palm leaf manuscripts containing religious texts.

Characteristics

There are 47 letters in the Balinese script, each representing a syllable with inherent vowel /a/ or/ə/ at the end of a sentence, which changes depending on the diacritics around the letter. Pure Balinese can be written with 18 consonant letters and 9 vowel letters, while Sanskrit transliteration or loan words from Sanskrit and Old Javanese utilizes the full set. A set of modified letters are also used for writing the Sasak language. Each consonant has a conjunct form called gantungan which nullifies the inherent vowel of the previous syllable.

Punctuation includes a comma, period, colon, as well as marks to introduce and end section of a text. Musical notation uses letter-like symbols and diacritical marks in order to indicate metrical information. Text are written left to right without word boundaries (Scriptio continua).

There is also a set of "holy letters" called aksara modre which appears in religious texts and protective talismans. Most of them are constructed using diacritic ulu candra with corresponding characters. A number of additional characters, known to be used inline in text (as opposed to decoratively on drawings), remains under study and those characters are expected to be proposed as Balinese extensions in due course.

Letters

A basic letter in Balinese is called aksara (ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭ), and each letter stands for a syllable with inherent vowel /a/.

Consonants

Consonants are called wianjana (ᬯ᭄ᬬᬦ᭄ᬚᬦ), and there are 33 consonants letters in Balinese, though only 18 called wreṣāstra (ᬯᬺᬱᬵᬲ᭄ᬢ᭄ᬭ) are used for writing the Balinese language. The rest are mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords.

Aksara wianjana (Consonants)
Warga (Place of articulation)	Pancawalimukha					Ardhasuara (Semivowels)	Usma (Fricatives)	Wisarga
	Unvoiced		Voiced		Nasal
Kanthya (Guttural)	(Ka) Ka	40px (Kha) Ka mahaprana	(Ga) Ga	40px (Gha) Ga gora	(Nga) Nga			(Ha) Ha
Talawya (Palatal)	(Ca) Ca murca	40px (Cha) Ca laca	(Ja) Ja	(Jha) Ja jera	(Nya) Nya	(Ya) Ya	40px (Śa) Sa saga
Murdhanya (Retroflex)	40px (Ṭa) Ta latik	(Ṭha) Ta latik m.	(Ḍa) Da murda a.	(Ḍha) Da murda m.	40px (Ṇa) Na rambat	(Ra) Ra	40px (Ṣa) Sa sapa
Dantya (Dental)	(Ta) Ta	40px (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	40px or (Bha) Ba kembang	(Ma) Ma	(Wa) Wa

^1 Aksara wreṣāstra. They are, in traditional order: ha na ca ra ka / da ta sa wa la / ma ga ba nga / pa ja ya nya.
^2 The consonant ha is sometimes not pronounced. For example, hujan is pronounced ujan.
^3 The exact form of ca laca is unknown because only the appended (gantungan) form is left. However, the independent form is included in Unicode.
^4 alpaprana ^5 mahaprana
^6 Actually an alveolar consonant, but classified as dental by tradition
^7 The former of the two letter forms is more frequently used.

Vowels

Vowels, called suara (ᬲ᭄ᬯᬭ), can be written as independent letters when 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)	50px	I	[i]	I kara		Ī	[iː]
Murdhanya (Retroflex)	50px	Ṛ	[ɹ̩]	Ra repa	50px	Ṝ	[ɹ̩ː]
Dantya (Dental)	50px	Ḷ	[l̩]	La lenga	50px	Ḹ	[l̩ː]
Osthya (Labial)	50px	U	[u]	U kara		Ū	[uː]
Kanthya-talawya (Palato-guttural)		E	[e]; [ɛ]	E kara (E) Airsanya (Ai)	50px	Ai	[aːi]
Kanthya-osthya (Labio-guttural)		O	[o]; [ɔ]	O kara		Au	[aːu]

Gantungan

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	Ka mahaprana	Ga	Ga gora	Nga			Ha
Talawya (Palatal)	Ca murca	Ca laca	Ja	Ja jera	Nya	Ya	Sa saga
Murdhanya (Retroflex)	Ta latik	Ta latik m.	Da madu a.	Da madu m.	Na rambat	Ra	50px Sa sapa
Dantya (Dental)	Ta	Ta tawa	Da lindung	Da madu	Na kojong	50px La	Sa danti
Osthya (Labial)	Ba	Ba kembang	Pa	Pa kapal	Ma	Wa

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)	50px	ě	[ə]	Pepet
		ā	[ɑː]	Tedung
Talawya (Palatal)		i	[i]	Ulu
		ī	[iː]	Ulu sari
Osthya (Labial)		u	[u]	Suku
	50px	ū	[uː]	Suku ilut
Kanthya-talawya (Palato-guttural)		é	[e]; [ɛ]	Taling
	50px	ai	[aːi]	Taling detya
Kanthya-osthya (Labio-guttural)	50px	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
50px	/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

Numerals

Main article: Balinese numerals

Balinese numeral	Hindu numeral	Name		Balinese numeral	Hindu numeral	Name
	0	Bindu/Windu			5	Lima
	1	Siki/Besik			6	Nem
50px	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
50px	Carik or Carik Siki.	Written in the middle of a sentence, like a comma (,). Also, written surrounding numerals to differentiate them from the text.
50px	Carik Kalih or Carik Pareren	Written at the end of a sentence, like a full stop (.).
50px	Carik pamungkah	Functions like a colon (:).
50px	Pasalinan	Used at the end of a prose, letter, or verse.
50px	Panten or Panti	Used at the beginning of a prose, letter, or verse.
50px	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".

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:

Balinese Official Unicode Consortium code 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 8.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Gallery

• 

  Page from a Bible printed with Balinese script

• 

  Balinese palm-leaf manuscript

• Pura Puseh 05153.jpg

  Sign at Pura Puseh Temple, Batuan, Bali

• 

  Street sign in Singaraja, written in Latin and Balinese script

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
• http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/balinese/
• http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/index.html and download http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/aksrbali.zip