The Balinese script, natively known as and , 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 a 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 or palm leaf manuscripts containing religious texts.
Characteristics
There are 47 letters in the Balinese script, each representing a syllable with inherent vowel or 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 pitch information. Text are written left to right without word boundaries (Scriptio continua).
There is also a set of "holy letters" called which appears in religious texts and protective talismans. Most of them are constructed using diacritic 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 (), and each letter stands for a syllable with inherent vowel /a/.
Consonants
Consonants are called () or (). Balinese script has 33 consonants, of which only 18 called () are used for writing basic vocabulary in Balinese language. The other 15, known as (), are mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords in Balinese language. The consonants can be arranged into Sanskrit order and traditional order.
traditional order
The consonants can be arranged in traditional order. The sequence forms a poem of 4 verses narrating the myth of Aji Saka. However, the sequence only has the 18 consonants of () and exclude (). However, this table below include as the current romanization have no diacritics for the consonants.
Sanskrit order
As other Brahmic scripts, consonants in Balinese script can be arranged into Tamil / Sanskrit order. Thus, Balinese script had been influenced by Kalvi / Shiksha. The table below uses the order.
. They are, in traditional order: ha na ca ra ka / da ta sa wa la / ma ga ba nga / pa ja ya nya.
The consonant is sometimes not pronounced. For example, (lit. rain) is pronounced . The exact form of is unknown because only the appended () form is left. However, the independent form is included in Unicode.
Actually an alveolar consonant, but classified as dental by tradition
The former of the two letter forms is more frequently used.
Vowels
Vowels, called () or (), can be written as independent letters when vowels appear in initial position. They are described in the following list:
and
() (appended letters) and () (attached letters) should be used to represent the consonant cluster, as zero vowel signs () are not used in the middle of sentences in general. Thus, as other members of the Brahmic family (Javanese), the consonant cluster is written cursively. Each consonant letter has a corresponding either or (for , , and only) form, and the presence of and eliminates the inherent vowel of the letter it is appended to. For example, if the letter () is appended with (), the pronunciation becomes ().
or can be applied with (diacritic) to a letter. However, attaching two or more to one letter is forbidden; this condition is known as (three layers). may be used in the middle of a sentence to avoid such situation. For example, with consonant cluster is written as .
The forms of and are as follows: