- published: 24 Apr 2014
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Hanunó’o is one of the indigenous scripts of the Philippines and is used by the Mangyan people of southern Mindoro to write the Hanunó’o language. It is an abugida descended from the Indic scripts, closely related to Baybayin, and is famous for being written vertical but written upward, rather than downward as nearly all other scripts (however, it's read horizontally left to right). It is usually written on bamboo by incising characters with a knife. Most known Hanunó'o inscriptions are relatively recent because of the perishable nature of bamboo. It is therefore difficult to trace the history of the script.
Fifteen basic characters of the Hanunó'o script each represent one of the fifteen consonants /p t k b d ɡ m n ŋ l r s h j w/ followed by the inherent vowel /a/. Other syllables are written by modifying each of these characters with one of two diacritics (kudlit) which change the vowel sound to /i/ or /u/. The glyph for /la/ is the same as that for /ra/ but the glyphs for /li/ and /ri/ are distinct, as are those for /lu/ and /ru/. There are also three glyphs that represent vowels which stand alone (phonetically preceded by a glottal stop, written q in Roman transliteration).Final consonants are not written, and so must be determined from context.
The Hanunó'o language is a language spoken by Mangyans in the province of Mindoro in the Philippines.
It is written in the Hanunó'o script.