Baybayin interview

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Baybayin

Christine Balza of Suku-Art and I got featured in the Times-Herald.

Even those in the Philippines don’t really know much about it, said Christian Cabuay, a Walnut Creek resident who runs the Web site http://www.baybayin.com. He attended high school in the United States and college in the Philippines.

But thanks to the Internet, both Cabuay and Balza, who runs the Web site http://www.suku-art.com, said they are seeing an explosion of interest in Baybayin.

The interest is particularly sharp among Filipino-Americans like Balza and Cabuay, they said.

“We’re out here trying to find identity,” Cabuay said as immigrants and children of immigrants try to reconcile their old heritage with an American one.

The popularity is especially felt among the tattooing community, said Cabuay, who sports a few Baybayin tattoos and offers tattoo designs at http://www.PinoyTattoos.com.

Baybayin essay

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Baybayin is a writing system that was in use by the Tagalogs in the Philippines when the Spaniards colonized the area. It is a syllabic writing system, meaning that each symbol represents a syllable. The base symbol represents a syllable ending with an ‘a’ sound. Modifiers, called kudlit, could be added to the symbol to change the vowel sound from an ‘a’ to an ‘e’ or ‘i’ (when placed above) or to an ‘o’ or ‘u’ (when placed below). [Read more]

Written by Anthony