Pegon (Javanese and Sundanese: , ; also known as , ) is a modified Arabic script used to write the Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese languages, as an alternative to the Latin script or the Javanese script and the Old Sundanese script. It was used in a variety of applications, from religion, to diplomacy, to poetry. But today particularly, it is used for religious (Islamic) writing and poetry, particularly in writing commentaries of the Qur'an. Pegon includes letters that are not present in Modern Standard Arabic. Pegon has been studied far less than its Jawi counterpart which is used for Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau.
In the past few decades, Indonesian language has grown in its prominence and role as the national language of Indonesia, being superimposed on all other local and regional languages. Thus, publishing institutions associated with religious schools have further developed new teaching material, in order to expand the use of Pegon script to Indonesian language as well. Indonesian language, being a variety of Malay, has also been written by the sister script of Pegon, Jawi.
Etymology
The word Pegon originated from the Javanese word , meaning "deviate", due to the practice of writing the Javanese language with Arabic script, which was considered unconventional by Javanese people.
History
One of the earliest dated examples of the usage of Pegon may be Masa'il al-ta'lim, a work on Islamic law written in Arabic with interlinear translation and marginal commentary in Javanese. The manuscript is dated 1623 and written on , a paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree.
Letters
Pegon uses the original letters of the Arabic script plus an additional seven letters to represent native Javanese sounds not present in Arabic: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), and ( ). One additional letter is used in foreign loanwords: ( ). These new letters are formed by the addition of dots to base letter forms. Pegon is not standardized and variation can be seen in how these additional letters are represented, most commonly in the position of the dots (above or below) and the number of dots (one or three).
In more recent teaching material, additional letters have been added in order to use the script for writing Indonesian language.
Representation of vowels
Diacritic marks () are used in Pegon to represent vowel sounds or in some cases a lack thereof. Their prevalence in Pegon text varies from marking every letter, to being present only to differentiate particular vowel sounds. Full marking of letters is common in most formal texts, including religious texts and historic diplomatic manuscripts.
Arabic script is a (mostly) consonantal writing system, meaning that only consonants are written. Arabic has 3 vowels, each being short or long. There are 3 letters in Arabic ("ا", "و", and "ي") that also represent long vowels. but otherwise the short vowels are marked in diacritic in religious texts or texts meant for beginner learners, that are not marked at all in most everyday texts. But, the phonology of Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese do not make such distinction. Instead there are 6 vowels. Thus, with the use of diacritics in conjuncton with the three aforementioned letters, Arabic script has become fully phonemic in its adoption for languages of Java Island.
Gundhul
A version of the script which uses no diacritics at all, similar to Jawi, is known as () meaning 'bare/bald' in Javanese. Within sentences and context, to a fluent speaker, the base letters often indicate the correct word and the underlying vowel which renders the diacritics unnecessary.
This version is increasingly common in typed books (as opposed to handwritten texts, as was the norm) as to a fluent speaker, the base letters often indicate the correct word and the underlying vowel which renders the diacritics unnecessary, in this case only the e-pepêt ( ۤ) is written. Other diacritics are only ever written when confusion arises, and are used to differentiate distinct vowel sounds.
List of vowel sounds
Vowels at the beginning of a word are indicated by the letter alif, by the appropriate diacritic on top of alif, as well as a follow-up letter "و" or "ي" if required. Traditionally, this follow-up letter will be written with a zero-vowel diacritic (sukun), to indicate its role as part of the first syllable of the word, and not the start of a new one.