Curves, lines, and dots. Such are the components for characters that we use to communicate with one another. You might be perfectly accustomed to the Latin alphabet, a collection of characters used in many languages all over the world. But how about this? This? Or this? By buy it, a script that is very Filipino, yet has not been extensively used for generations. Before the introduction of the Latin alphabet in the mid-late 1500s, the Philippines already had at least 16 different writing systems, including but not limited to kulitan from Pampanga, Ruid and Hanonoo from Mindoro and Badlid from the Visayas. By buy-in, for the Tagalogs was just one of the many, but is the more popular one which people know of today. So, how does it work? By buy-in also mistakenly known as Alibata is an abogida, otherwise known as an alphacillabary, where each symbol denotes a syllable and not an individual sound like the alphabet. The thyscript, tamil script and lao script are examples of abogidas from other countries that work in a similar fashion. With that in mind, if you have a word like maio, writing it will break it down to ma-a-end-yo, with each syllable corresponding to one character. Learning by buy-in isn't all too difficult, as there are only 17 base characters you need to get used to, with three simple modifiers that change the sound of each syllable. For the consonants, you have ba ga da or ra ga la ma na na ba sa da wa and ya, inhale. For the vowels, you have a, e or e and o or u. If you've looked into my buy-in before, you might notice that these aren't exactly the same as the ones you'd see online, but that's just because the script isn't perfectly standardized yet. Now, there are a total of four variations for writing a character that each change the pronunciation of a character. Let's take the character wa, for instance. Without any good lit, it would just be the standard wa. If we would place a good lit that looks like a small line, hook or dot above the character, it would turn it into a w-or-we. If we place a good lit under, it would be a wo or wo. And finally, we could also place a good lit underneath to remove the vowel sound completely, making a wo. Worn that in a bit. These apply to all characters except for a, e or e and o or u, since they are pure vowels that can stand on their own. Now, a small thing to take note of is that there's a difference between traditional and modernized ba ba in. In traditional ba ba in, one, consonants, pure consonants that weren't followed by a vowel at all, such as t, instead of t, or m, instead of ma. They were all completely dropped from writing, and two, there weren't any spaces between words in a sense. Everything was just cramped up together. So, a word such as ba ba in, for example, would be spelled out as ba ba ye, because y and n were followed by a vowel, so they were just dropped. This changed in 1620 when a Spanish priest, Father Francisco Lopez, introduced the crusco lit. The Spanish had to learn by ba in to better communicate with the Filipinos, and the crusco lit helped them translate many of their own terms, which tended to have a lot of pure consonants. The symbol effectively served to omit the vowel that was naturally expected to follow any consonant. In terms of punctuation, it is fairly straightforward. A single vertical line represents a comma or a short pause, and two vertical lines for a period. There isn't really anything that corresponds to a question mark or an exclamation point, but I personally like to just use them anyway. With all this in mind, let's try a few examples. Let's start with something simple. Tao, a person. The city name, Kageyan, which will split up in duka, ga, ya, and nn to accommodate the modernized version. Write those characters down and you're good to go. Sano, sa, na, o, and ln. Write those characters down, and that's literally all you'll need. Remember, you need to write them as they sound, and not how they're normally spelled with a Latin alphabet. Let's try a short sentence. Matogsako, ma, to, g, sa, ko. That will give you by buying for, I'm first going to sleep in saivano. How about two English phrases? Vote wisely, which you would write as you would say it in Filipino, both wisely. So that would be bo, wa, ii, s, li, and finally, happy new year. Happy new year. Or, happy new year. There are two variations in this case. Writing it down on paper and even doing calligraphy with this is pretty fun on its own. But here's how you can include it into your digital life as well. If you are on a computer, there are several websites that allow you to download different fonts that displayed by buying characters. And on Android, if you have G-Board or the Google keyboard, you can add by buying as an additional keyboard in the language settings. For iOS users, unfortunately, you'd need to opt for either buying a by buying keyboard from the app store or by looking up an online translator on the web. Despite being a functionally dead script, there have been several attempts at revitalizing it in the past. So, while it may not be that useful for communicating with other people just yet, at least it helps one connect with their Filipino roots, as well as just being a cool aesthetic overall. There are already a bunch of articles online that explain by buying in greater depth, talking more about its history, the other writing systems, its development, and how it can be further modernized to fit the way we talk today. So, if that's the kind of thing you're interested in, go check them out. Thanks for watching!