Suyat

Suyat (Baybayin: ᜐᜓᜌᜆ᜔, Hanunó'o: ᜰᜳᜬᜦ᜴, Buhid: ᝐᝓᝌ, Tagbanwa: ᝰᝳᝬ, Modern Kulitan: Jawi (Arabic): سُيَت‎) is a collective name for the Brahmic scripts of Philippine ethnolinguistic groups.

[8] Baybayin is a script that has historically been widely used in traditional Tagalog domains and in other parts of Luzon and Visayas in the Philippines prior to and during the 16th and 17th centuries.

[citation needed] Baybayin script continued to be used during the early part of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines until largely being replaced by usage of the Latin alphabet.

[13] Buhid, Hanunóo, and Tagbanwa are the only surviving descendants of Baybayin, however their use is confined to poetry and other literary pursuits among their writers.

Unlike Baybayin (which is an abugida) and Eskayan (which is a syllabary), the Arabic script is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants.

The Tausugs, Malays, and other groups that use it hold the script in high esteem as a gateway to understanding Islam and its Holy Book, the Quran.

The use of Jawi script was a key factor driving the emergence of Malay as the lingua franca of the region, alongside the spread of Islam.

[17][18][1][19] In 1999, four suyat scripts were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, under the name Philippine Paleographs (Hanunoo, Buid, Tagbanua and Pala’wan).

[20] Computer fonts for these three living scripts are available for IBM and Macintosh platforms, and come into two styles based on actual historical and stylistic samples.

PostScript and TrueType fonts as well a concise manual that gives a background of these ancient scripts and a short tutorial on how to write with them are included in each package.

The Tausug Arabic script utilises the letter yā' with a hamza (ئ) to represent a short vowel.

An example of the Arabic alphabet in writing the Tausūg language: The "National Script Act" went before the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines in 2011.

According to a press release from the House, the bill "declares there is a need to promote, protect, preserve and conserve "Baybayin" as the National Writing System of the Philippines, using it as a tool for cultural and economic development to create a consciousness, respect and pride for the legacies of Filipino cultural history, heritage and the country's authentic identity.