Tagbanwa alphabet

The font of the Tagbanuwa or Tagbanwa on Palawan (Philippines ) comes as the once common Filipino Baybayin script of the Javanese Kawi script ( see Balinese script), and is as such an abugida script, that is, each character represents a syllable, beginning with a specific consonant, the vowel and the syllable is displayed by adding or omitting diacritics. Without vowel is the vowel a ( inherent vowel), and how the Baybayin there are only two vowels ( in transliteration with i and u represented ), so it will not distinguish between i and e, and between o and u.

The Tagbanuwa font is related to a poetic style that is based on the number of syllables in a line. The Kavi script is based on the Pallava script of South India, derived from the Brahmi script. The writing was taught the Tagwanuwa of the Bugis from Makassar in pre-Hispanic times around the 15th century. The font is traditionally written on bamboo sticks in vertical columns from bottom to top and from left to right. The Tagbanuwa language is still spoken by about 8,000 people in central and northern Palawan.

This document has been declared in 1999 by UNESCO to the "Memories of mankind". The ISO 15924 code for this script is TagB.