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As each old culture develops it's local forms of communication and writings like the sanscrit of ancient India and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, so too does the Philippines and for the Filipnos their ancient form of writing is called alibata which is believed to have originated somewhere in 14th century. Alibata was widely used by the inhabitants of the islands as their form of writing until the arrival of the Spaniards in 16th century.

When the Spaniards arrived in the islands, they found the people in Manila, which at the times was a port town and other places using bamboo and specially prepared palm leaves to write on using styli and knives. These people were making used of an old Tagalog script which comprised of 17 basic symbols that consisted of three vowels, namely a, i and u. The other symbols were consonants that had an inherent sound, i.e. ka, ga, nga, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, la, wa, sa, and ha.

This Tagalog script which eventually became known as Baybayin and later Alibata was syllabary, meaning that each of the symbols represented a complete syllable. In contrast the standard Latin alphabet as it is today, the symbols represent a phoneme or the smallest unit of speech. This distinction is what made it difficult for many people especially from the west, who have been familiar with the alphabetic system, understand the correct usage of the Tagalog script.

Understanding the Script

To further understand the script, one of the things to note is the use of the Kudlit which is a diacritical mark used to modify the sound of the symbol. The use of the kudlit could be a dot, a short line or even an arrowhead. Place above one of the symbols, it will change the sound of the symbol from a to i, and if it placed below the sounds would become a u. As an example if a ba symbol had a kudlit placed on top it would then become bi, and if the kudlit was inserted below the symbol then it became a bu. Simple as it was the system was elegant and at the time it was known as the baybayin, this was eventually known as Alibata as it is now known in 1914.

The Tagalog script is simply basic and only represents two types of syllables, namely V and CV where C= consonant and V = vowel, however the language itself had V, CV, VC and CVC types of syllables. This would mean that specific syllables like a, bi or ku using the script would not be able to be written down accurately. Other syllables such as pit, kam, ak or ting (with ng as one consonant) could not even be represented in the system, as Tagalog did not have consonant clusters such as the CCVC, tram.

The Evolution of the Missing Final Consonant.

When the ancients Filipinos came to writing down the syllabes of the CVC type, they for simplicity just dropped the final consonant. In essence ak was simply written down as a, pit as pi, and so on. Eventually however, the missing final consonant made its way back and this was returned to the text later using a techniwue that is still not understood until this day. This mystery will likely remain as such as no records of how this evolved was ever recorded. There may have been so many elements and circumstances that brought about this changethat we may never know about which allowed the ancient people determine the value of the missing consonant even though those with training in literacy perhaps think of context when trying to link clues to the reasons behind it.