Monthly Archives: December 2010

Baybayin on coins

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This is a guest post from MARY ANN UBALDO (Panday Ginto Urduja)
www.urduja.com
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I have known from Professor Gandhi Cardenas about the Baybayin “Pi” in our Pilipino coins in the denominations of 1 peso ( Year 1996,1997,1998,2000,&2001) & 10 peso Philippine Millenium 2000-2001 Series. I have 14 of these coins as a gift from Gandhi from the early 2000. I have been wearing this Philippine Millenium Series 2001, 10 peso coin as a necklace & have given Perla Daly one of these coins as a gift. The font used in these coins are from Baybayin Lopez 1620. The Baybayin “Pi” is located below the neck of Andres Bonifacio.

VIEW THE PICTURE OF THE Philippine Millenium Series 2000-2001
Ten Piso Coin

Baybayin Buhayin iPhone app now available in iTunes Philippines

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The Baybayin Buhayin app has just been released on the Philippine Apple app store. It’s FREE for a limited time. If your outside the Philippines, you can get it by creating another Apple account and choosing the Philippines as your home country. Once all setup, search for Baybayin. For Philippine accounts, here’s the direct link. This is only V1. Look out for more features soon.

Some basic info about the script

The most interesting part is the tutorial where you can trace the strokes. There’s even audio of the pronunciation.

Baybayin on American TV show Burn Notice

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I think it’s a given that Baybayin will certainly gain exposure in 2011 with several projects like the Baybayin keyboard and my documentary but just this week, we have the new Peso bills and this American TV show.

On the 12/16 episode of Burn Notice (Season 4 episode 17: Out of the Fire), Baybayin was shown on explosives.

The context is that this guy wants to blow something up but have the authorities think it’s Filipinos from Manila. Pretty funny stuff. He has an instruction manual that has some Baybayin on it and the guy says, “I know you want to frame some guys in Manila but I don’t read Tagalog”. I couldn’t make out any of the words. Could just be random garbage.

It looks like the Baybayin is incorrect on the explosives. You can see in one of the photos below, there are no kudlits. One common mistake is to forget that each consonant already has an inherent vowel. Adding a vowel after it would be redundant.

I think one of the words is supposed to say Patok. The longer word looks like it has the following characters: Pa-Nga-Ya-Na-e/i. I think the Nga is supposed to be N but when you type a capital N, it outputs the Nga. The last photo has the A & E/I characters. Anyone have any guesses?

You can watch the whole dumb episode here. Forward to about 18 minutes. Be patient as there are a few annoying commercials. The female lead is hot though.

Poor Paul Morrow, 1 day he get’s the prestige of having his fonts on the new Philippine Peso bills and the very next day his work is on some crappy show that doesn’t do enough research.

Thanks to Nathan DjHyped Partida from PSTGear for the tip

The man behind the Baybayin on the new Peso bills

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The Baybayin community is quite excited with the new Peso bills just announced. This isn’t the 1st time Baybayin has been on our money. It’s been on Peso bills in the 1940’s on the Katipunan flag and most recently a microscopic “Pi” on coins. These new bills have an actual word spelled – Pilipino. You can see it partially on the bottom right front of the bills. Too bad it has to be held in the light to be seen.

The moment I saw it, I knew it was one of Paul Morrow‘s fonts. For those that don’t know, Paul is actually not Filipino. He’s a white guy from Canada who knows more about Filipino culture than most Filipinos.

I reached out to him to see how felt about having is work on the new bills. To my surprise, he didn’t even know about it. Here’s his statement:

From what I can see in the photos, it is definitely my “Tagalog Stylized” font, which I created in 1992. I would need to see one of the new bills up close to see if it is my current version or an older one, which has some very minor differences.

Nobody from the Philippine government consulted me about using one of my fonts, but I have always offered them for free on my website, so I can’t complain. It’s definitely in the public domain now. Actually, I feel honoured, even though it was not the government’s intention to honour me.

I assume that whoever designed the bills wanted a modern look and chose this font over my other fonts, which are historical replicas of old typefaces. My website and the information sheet that is part of the font’s download state that my “Tagalog Stylized” font is a modern interpretation of the old baybayin script and is not historically accurate.