The Arabs

The Spanish

The Americans

Vestiges of the writing system

Reasons for the Extinction of Alibata

The Arabs

In Mindanao, one of the southernmost regions of the Philippines, variants of the Arabic script were adopted as the cultures came into contact with Arab traders. No evidence of the Philippine scripts has been found in this region.

The Spanish

After the first coming of the Spanish, the Roman alphabet superseded almost all of the indigenous scripts within a hundred years.²⁷ As the indigenous people become more assimilated into Spanish colonial culture, and as the labor demanded by the domineering Spanish consumed their free time, they neglected to use their script and failed to pass it on to succeeding generations. ²⁸

Ironically, when the Spanish first arrived, they were so impressed with the literacy rate of the inhabitants of the Philippines that one of the missionaries, Father Chirino, stated that "So given are these islanders to reading and writing that there is hardly a man, and much less a woman, that does not read and write in letters peculiar to the island of Manila." ²⁹

Initially, the friars took interest in the Philippine scripts, learning them in order to better communicate with the inhabitants of the Philippines.³⁰ In time, however, the Spanish crown deigned it necessary to teach Spanish to the native inhabitants.³¹ But friars did not efficiently execute this royal decree, partly because the friars saw that they could maintain a position of power if they kept the native inhabitants in a state of ignorance. ³² This way, the friars would be indispensable to the crown, since the friars would be the only ones able to communicate with the natives, and at the same time, they could keep the natives subservient. Because of this, it could be said that the Spanish actually tried to suppress all literacy, whether of Philippine scripts or of the Roman alphabet.

The indigenous people apparently found it easy to adopt the Roman alphabet, however, particularly since it could better represent their speech. But more importantly to them, knowledge of the alphabet gave them leverage when dealing with the Spanish, and in fact allowed them to advance in social and economic standing in Spanish colonial society.

The Americans

By the time the Americans reached the Philippines, Spanish had become entrenched as the language of the government administration and justice system,³³ and evidence of the indigenous writing were almost completely erased. Literacy in the Roman alphabet developed into the norm once the Americans supplanted the Spanish, because of the institution of a national public school system and with the introduction of English as the language of instruction.³⁴

Vestiges of the writing system

Interestingly, it appears that the syllabic way of thinking still persists despite the adoption of the Roman alphabet. The alphabet is still recited by attaching vowels to the consonant (that is, a, ba, ka, da, e, and so on.) And while some of the words borrowed from Spanish and from English were accepted with their original spelling intact, others have been changed so as to resemble the syllabification of the Philippine language. For instance, since no phoneme exists for the "j" sound of English, the syllables "ja," "je-ji", and "jo-ju" do not exist. They are approximated as "di ya," "di ye-di yi," and "di yo-di yu." Thus juice can be written and/or pronounced as diyus,jeepney as diyipni,generator as diyenerator. No phoneme exists for the "sh" sound of English either, so "sha," "she-shi," and "sho-shu" are approximated by "si ya,""si ye-si yi," and "si yo-si yu" Shampoo becomes siyampu, and shooting becomes siyuting. Because of the lack of consonantal clusters in most of the Philippine languages, these are also rendered as separate syllables. The syllable "spV," would be renderd as "es pV" or "is pV" and "stV" would be rendered as "es tV" or "es tV," where V represents any vowel.