Alibata

Alibata is an ancient writing system that was used in what is now the Philippines. Although it was all but extinguished by Western colonization, variants of it are still used in parts of Mindoro and Palawan, and it is also increasingly used by Filipino youth as a way to express their identity.

Origins of Alibata

Although the major languages of the Philippines are now written using the Roman alphabet, the languages were first represented using a script related to and directly or indirectly derived from the scripts of India. The script has had a rather short history, having come into use around AD 1000-1200.¹ and for the most part becoming extinct in the late 18th century.² However, two forms of the indigenous scripts still survive to present day: the script used by the Tagbanwa from the island of Palawan, and the script used by the Mangyan from the island of Mindoro.³ In truth, however, the origin of the script has not yet been ascertained, and various theories abound.

The term Alibata

The script is often referred to as alibata, a term coined inexplicably to mimic the first two letters of the alphabet of the Maguindanao, used in the southern Philippines, which is derived from Arabic. (The term refers to the first two letters, alifand bet.) It is also called baybayin, which means "to spell" in Tagalog.