Balinese

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

The sources are not very clear about Balinese vowel length. Wiktionary IPA transcriptions make no distinction in pronunciation between the long and short vowel graphemes, and this is backed up in some sources. One study describes Balinese speakers reduce long vowels to short when speaking English. Clynes@Clynes: Topics in the Phonology and Morphosyntax of Balinese,https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/10744/5/Clynes%20Thesis%201996.pdf argues that some apparently long vowels are parts of separate syllables and split into different sounds under morphological changes.

On the other hand, sources including Ida Bagus Adi Sudewasb and Wikipediawl indicate that there is a difference in vowel length.

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	pharyngeal	glottal
stop	p b	t d				k ɡ
affricate				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
fricative	f v		s z			x ɣ	ħ ʕ	h
nasal	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
approximant	w		l		j
trill/flap			r

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Multipart forms are not shown here because all vowels and diphthongs are normally represented using one of the atomic characters listed here. Standalone vowels are shown in the right-hand column.

For more details see vowel_mappings.

This is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Balinese language.

Inherent vowel

ᬓ ka U+1B13 BALINESE LETTER KA

a following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so ka is written by simply using the consonant letter.

However, the inherent vowel is pronounced ə at the end of a word and also in prefixes ma-, pa- and da-.

Vowels after consonants

Post-consonant vowels are written using 11 combining marks (vowel signs). There are 2 pre-base glyphs and 6 circumgraphs.

In principle, Balinese has no multipart vowels, however the 6 circumgraphs can also be decomposed into 2 parts. Those can involve up to 2 glyphs, and glyphs can surround the base consonant(s) on up to 3 sides.

Pre-base vowel signs

ᬓᬾ ke U+1B13 BALINESE LETTER KA + U+1B3E BALINESE VOWEL SIGN TALING

Two vowel signs appear to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster.

ᬾ␣ᬿ

These are combining marks that are always stored after the syllable-initial consonant. The rendering process places the glyph before the consonant. Click on the following word to see the sequence of characters in storage.

ᬘᬾᬮᬾᬂ

These vowel characters are actually placed before the start of the orthographic syllable. This means that a word with a consonant cluster at the start separates the pre-base vowel from any post-base vowels by more than one consonant character (see fig_prebase).

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ᬩᭂᬦ᭄ᬤᬾᬰ

Circumgraphs

ᬓᭀ ko U+1B13 BALINESE LETTER KA + U+1B40 BALINESE VOWEL SIGN TALING TEDUNG

Five vowel signs are usually produced by a single combining character with visually separate parts, that appear on different sides of the consonant onset.

ᭀ␣ᭃ␣ᭁ␣ᬻ␣ᬼ␣ᬽ

This section includes some vowel signs described in the section vocalics.

Like pre-base glyphs, these are combining marks that are always stored after the base consonant. The rendering process places the glyphs around the base consonant, as needed. Click on the following word to see the sequence of characters in storage.

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ᬤᭀᬦ᭄

Glyphs can appear on up to 3 sides of the base. Some of the glyphs merge with the base character's glyph (see context).

These circumgraphs have canonically equivalent decomposed forms (see vs_encoding).

Standalone vowels

Balinese has 2 ways to represent standalone vowels: using independent vowels, or using vowel signs.

Tones

Balinese is not a tonal language.

Vowel absence

Balinese uses ᭄ (the Balinese equivalent of the Sanskrit virama) to kill the inherent vowel after a consonant.

The adeg adeg is always visible at the end of a word that ends in consonant and isn't followed by another consonant, eg.

ᬧᬦᬓ᭄

It is usually hidden (with occasional exceptions) when the consonant is part of a consonant cluster (see clusters).

Sometimes it is used to clarify the distinction between a word-final consonant and a medial consonant by preventing the stacking of the final consonant in the previous word and the first consonant in the next, eg. compare: ᬧᬓ᭄ᬭᬫᬦ᭄ ᬧᬓ᭄‌ᬭᬫᬦ᭄

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Balinese vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Balinese orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Dependent vowels are shown to the left, and independent vowels are shown on the right. Independent vowels are usually only used in word-initial position. Word-internal standalone vowels (and word-initial in the case of ə and əː) use the vowel sign over a silent 1B33. Those combinations are not shown here. Vowel signs that decompose are shown only in precomposed form.

Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, Sanskrit, etc.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

Consonants used for native Balinese words are shown in the left-hand column. On the right are consonants used for words from Kawi, Sanskrit, and other languages.

For more details see consonant_mappings.

Basic consonants

The characters listed here and in the following sections also have conjoined and/or subjoined forms, which may differ significantly from those shown here. See clusters for a list of glyph shapes.

This section lists the basic 18 consonants known as aksara wreṣāstra (ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭᬯᬺᬱᬵᬲ᭄ᬢ᭄ᬭ). Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).

ᬳ at the beginning of a word or after a preceding vowel is mostly used as a support for a vowel sign (see standalone), and is not pronounced or transcribed. Word finally with a suffix vowel, however, it is transcribed.loc

Additional/honorific consonants

These are called aksara sualalita (ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭᬰ᭄ᬯᬮᬮᬶᬢ).

Many of the additional consonants are commonly used in words originating from Arabic and Dutch, and are most common in north Bali and Lombok. When used in pure Balinese words, they are similar to capital letters and are used to create an honorific effect. There are similar characters in Javanese.

They don't add any consonant sounds to the Balinese repertoire. In words originating from Sanskrit, Old Javanese, or Old Balinese, they represent aspirated or other consonants.loc

Additional consonants used for Sanskrit words.

Additional consonants used for words from Kawi.

Two consonants, ᬔ and ᬙ, are considered very rare, and one other, ᬛ, seems to be known from only one word:

ᬦᬶᬃᬛᬭ

(It is possible that an original ai may have been lost in Balinese, to be replaced by the glyph for jʰa.)

A number of the Sanskrit or Kawi consonants are rather poorly attested. The letter ᬙ is only found in non-initial position following ᬘ, ie. ᬘ᭄ᬙ c͓CMost of the series that originally represented retroflex sounds is often omitted in books about the script.

Rerekan

The combining mark ᬴ is used, as is a similar sign in Javanese, to extend the character repertoire for foreign sounds.

The first 7 of the 8 listed above are attested in Library of Congress transliterations and in earlier Sasak orthography. The 8th, ᬤ᬴ could be used for one-to-one transliteration for Javanese ɖ.

In rendering, the dots of these letters appear above the top character, which can cause some ambiguity in reading. The following are all visually indistinguishable: ᬓ᬴᭄ᬚ kˑ͓ʤ xja ᬓ᭄ᬚ᬴ k͓ʤˑ kza ᬓ᬴᭄ᬚ᬴ kˑ͓ʤˑ xza

In practice these combinations are probably rather rare.

Sasak

Onset consonants

The consonants ya, ra, la and wa regularly appear immediately after the initial consonant in a syllable. Unlike Javanese, Balinese has no special characters for these medial sounds (other than the vocalics mentioned earlier); they are just written using the normal approach for dealing with consonant clusters. These shapes are called pangangge aksara (ᬧᬗ᭢​ᬗ᭄ᬕᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭ).

ᬓ᭄ᬭᬫ

Multiple medials can occur: r or l can be followed by w or y, eg.

ᬩ᭄ᬭ᭄ᬬᬕ᭄

In addition, the vocalics can produce consonant sounds (tied to a specific vowel) in medial position, eg.

ᬓᬺᬰ᭄ᬡ

See clusters for more details on shaping of glyphs.

Final consonants

Word-final consonant sounds with no following consonant are by default represented by ordinary consonant characters, followed by ᭄ . which is visible if not followed by another consonant. These shapes are called

ᬓᬵᬤᭂᬧ᭄

ᬓᬧᬮ᭄

However, there is also a set of combining marks for syllable-final consonants that don't need to be followed by the adeg adeg.

1B02 and 1B04 only appear at the end of a word, eg. ᬓᭂᬋᬂ ᬫᬗᬄ unless the word involves repetition, eg. ᬘᬾᬂᬘᬾᬂ

1B03 can appear at the end of any syllable.

ᬓᬃᬡ

A syllable-final diacritic may appear above a stack. It is typed and stored after the other components in the stack, eg. ᬩᬗ᭄ᬓᬸᬂ

When the syllable has a spacing vowel sign, any above-base final-consonant mark appears over the base character, rather than over the vowel sign. This is positioned by the font; the final consonant mark is still typed and stored after the other syllable components, eg. ᬕᭂᬤᭀᬂ

See also cchar_modre.

Consonant clusters

The absence of a vowel sound between two or more consonants is visually indicated in one of the following ways.

1. Stacked consonants, where the non-initial (subjoined) consonant appears below the initial, often with a different shape from normal.
2. Conjoined consonants, where consonants sit side-by-side but the non-initial consonant has a slightly different form than usual.
3. A visible adeg adeg following the initial consonant.

See also finals for a dedicated final consonant mark followed by a regular consonant.

Word boundaries. Conjuncts span word boundaries. Because there are no spaces between words, a cluster is created when a consonant with no following vowel at the end of a word is followed by a consonant at the beginning of the next word.

Stacks and conjoined sequences are not normally split at line ends (see word and linebreak for the ramifications of this).

Conjoined consonants

In conjoined clusters, the consonant glyphs remain side by side, but the non-initial consonant is reduced on the left side. These conjoined forms are called gempelan (ᬕᬾᬫ᭄ᬧᬾᬮᬦ᭄).

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ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭ

This list shows consonants in their normal and conjoined forms

native letters

ᬧ᭄ᬧ␣ᬲ᭄ᬲ␣ᬋ᭄ᬋ

Kawi letters

ᬨ᭄ᬨ␣ᬱ᭄ᬱ

The conjoined ᬲ is unusual in that it also adds a stroke below the initial consonant (see fig_conjoined_sa). This helps distinguish it from the conjoined p.

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ᬧᬓ᭄ᬲ

Dedicated final marks

Balinese represents some final consonants using dedicated marks (see finals). Such final marks are followed by ordinary consonant shapes in consonant clusters. There is no visual indication of missing vowel sounds other than the use of the mark itself.

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ᬓᬃᬡ

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Balinese consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Balinese orthography.

The left column contains native Balinese letters. The right column contains letters borrowed from Sanskrit or Kawi, or extended with rerekan.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, Sanskrit, etc.

Modre symbols

Two combining marks have a specialist usage related to (usually religious) Sanskrit words.

ᬀ when combined with certain syllables becomes part of the Aksara Modre, or holy letters, which are used to write words in Sanskrit, usually part of prayers. This character only appears in Sanskrit texts, eg. ᬰᬶᬤ᭄ᬥᬀ siddham

ᬁ appears only in holy letters, eg. ᬫᬁ mŋ̽ (Mang)When combined with independent vowel ạʷ it becomes a special symbol called omkara and is pronounced m. In this form it is used to represent god, eg. ᬒᬁᬱᬦ᭄ᬢᬶ᭞ᬱᬦ᭄ᬢᬶ᭞ᬱᬦ᭄ᬢᬶ᭞ᬒᬁ

    .

Musical marks and symbols

The other symbols in the Balinese block are all musical symbols, and are not described here.

There is also a set of musical diacritical marks, which are not described here.

Encoding vowel signs

Five of the circumgraphs can be written as a single character, or as two characters, the second being ᬵ [U+1B35 BALINESE VOWEL SIGN TEDUNG] in all cases.

The single code point per vowel sign is preferred, however the parts are separated in Unicode Normalisation Form D (NFD), and recomposed in Unicode Normalisation Form C (NFC), so both approaches are canonically equivalent.

Whichever approach is used, the vowel signs must be typed and stored after the consonant characters they surround, and in left to right order.

Encoding independent vowels

Three of the independent vowels can be written as a single character, or as two. Again, this always involves ᬵ.

The precomposed characters decompose in NFD, and reform again in NFC. It is generally recommended to use the precomposed character.

Combining mark order

The following indicates the expected ordering of Unicode characters within a Burmese combining character sequence. The labels are those used for the Unicode Indic Syllabic Categories. Follow the links to see what characters are represented by a given label.

Burmese has 2 types of combining character sequence (CCS).

The first type is a base plus Virama. This is the non-final part of a consonant cluster or a consonant with a killed vowel, and consists of just the base and the virama.

The general CCS type uses the following preferred ordering after a base.

1. Nukta
2. Vowel_Dependent (15)
3. Bindu (3) | Visarga | Consonant_Final

Ordering characters as shown above avoids potential ambiguities and maximises the likelihood of success when rendering the text.

Context-based shaping & positioning

Balinese text relies on OpenType rules to correctly position glyphs and shape them according to the surrounding text.

One major area where this applies is in the use of conjunct forms for consonant clusters. See the relevant sections for lists of stacked and conjoined shapes.

The following is a selection of other examples of contextual shaping and positioning.

After a stacked consonant, the vowel signs that would normally appear below a base are moved to the side, and the shape is modified.

ᬵ and the right side of ᭁ combine with several of the consonants. The table below shows 2 examples.

When a vowel sign and a syllable-final consonant mark appear over the same base, they are typically drawn side by side. Combinations such as rerekan and above-base vowels are typically stacked.^§

Word boundaries

Words are not separated by spaces, and in fact some word boundaries occur between stacked consonants. This means that segmentation for line-breaking, etc. uses orthographic syllables as a unit (see graphemes).

details

ᬓᬳᬦᬦ᭄ pŋn kahanan
ᬮᬦ᭄ pŋn lan
ᬓ᭄ᬯᬲ dik kwasa

Graphemes

Grapheme clusters alone are not sufficient to represent typographic units in Balinese. Stacks and conjoined sequences are very common and must not be split apart by edit operations that visually change the text (such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, and line breaking). For those operations one needs to segment the text using orthographic syllables, which string grapheme clusters together with ᭄, which has an Indic Syllabic Category of Virama.

The adeg-adeg is rendered visibly if it is not part of a consonant cluster, for example at the end of a word followed by a space.

Balinese doesn't use word boundaries for text segmentation, relying instead on grapheme boundaries because consonant clusters that span word boundaries are combined into stacks or conjoined forms.

Grapheme clusters

Base Combining_mark* Joiner?

Combining marks may include zero or more of the following types of character:

1. Nukta (see extendedC)
2. Dependent vowels (see combiningV and vocalics)
3. Final consonants (see finals)
4. Virama (adeg adeg) (see clusters and novowel)

Any of the above may occur after a consonant base. Independent vowel bases usually only have final consonant marks.

The following examples show a variety of grapheme clusters:

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ᬢᬷᬃᬢ
	ᬅᬃᬣ
	ᬓᬺᬰ᭄ᬡ
	ᬤᬍᬫ᭄
	ᬤᬦ᭄ᬢ

Note how grapheme clusters break up the conjuncts. This is not usually desirable (see orthographicS just below).

Larger typographic units

(Consonant Rerekan? Adeg_adeg)* Grapheme_cluster

Balinese commonly stacks or conjoins glyphs, to form conjuncts. The conjuncts represent consonant clusters, which can arise (a) where one phonetic syllable ends in a consonant letter and the following syllable begins with a consonant, or (b) when most medial consonants are written, since Balinese uses conjunct forms for sequences such as Cr-, Cy-, Cw-, Cry-, etc. The cluster of consonants that make up the conjunct are all encoded with adeg adeg between them (see clusters).

Balinese is unusual in that these conjuncts occur across word boundaries, so the word-final consonant of the first word may be stacked above the word-initial consonant of the second. See fig_kahananlankwasa2 for an example.

Grapheme clusters terminate after a sequence of marks containing an adeg adeg, but editorial operations that change the visual appearance of the text, such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, line-breaking, and justification, should never split conjunct forms apart. For this reason, an alternative way of segmenting graphemes is needed. This may not apply, however, for some other operations such as cursor movement or backwards delete.

Where conjuncts appear, a typographic unit contains multiple grapheme clusters. The non-final grapheme clusters all end with ᭄, and the final grapheme cluster begins with a consonant.

The following are examples.

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ᬤᬦ᭄ᬢ
	ᬢᬶᬫ᭄ᬧᬮ᭄
	ᬩ᭄ᬭ᭄ᬬᬕ᭄
	ᬰᬵᬲ᭄ᬢ᭄ᬭ

Note that one of the characteristic features of the Indic category of Virama is that the adeg adeg is visible when not followed by a consonant, but invisible when a consonant does follow (creating a stack). This means that the adeg adeg sometimes participates in a simple grapheme cluster, but when followed by a consonant it becomes the 'glue' that creates an orthographic syllable.

On the infrequent occasions when an adeg adeg needs to be visible even though it is followed by another base, an invisible character must be added to prevent it joining with the following base. A zero-width space can achieve that.

ᬧᬓ᭄​ᬭᬫᬦ᭄

Punctuation & inline features

Line & paragraph layout

Line breaking & hyphenation

Because there are no spaces between words, and because the end of one word and the beginning of another often form conjuncts (see fig_kahananlankwasa2), Balinese doesn't wrap at word boundaries. See graphemes for a description of the typographic units that are used for line break opportunities.

Unfortunately, modern browsers are often unable to detect appropriate break points for Balinese, so in the sample text at the beginning of this page 200B is used at places where the line could be broken. Otherwise, the line would continue, unbroken off the right side of the page.

Pameneng

᭠

In lontar texts where a word must be broken at the end of a line (always after a full syllable), the sign ᭠ is inserted. This sign is not used as a word-joining hyphen; it is used only in linebreaking.

Observation: The images appear to show a gap before the pameneng.

In online use, an application would need to insert the pameneng, rather than the content author. As line-length is changed by stretching a window, or as content is added earlier in the same paragraph, the location of the word relative to the line edge will change. The insertion of pameneng is only appropriate at those instants when the appropriate sequence of characters appears at the line end.

For an application to use this correctly, it would need to know where the word boundaries are in the text, and then put this character at the end of the line only when a multisyllabic word is broken. This would require a dictionary to be applied to the text, since it would not be appropriate to insert the pameneng at the boundary of 2 words.

Observation: Aditya Bayu Perdana has found instances in lontar where ᬄ is moved to the beginning of a line, alone, while a pameneng appears at the end of the previous line. If this is not just a scribal inconsistency (eg. it's not clear why you wouldn't put the bisah at the end of the line if there's space for a pameneng), it may indicate that this letter should not be a combining mark in Unicode; however, the usage needs to be verified first. See pictures.

Line-edge rules

As in almost all writing systems, certain punctuation characters should not appear at the end or the start of a line. The Unicode line-break properties help applications decide whether a character should appear at the start or end of a line.

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the Balinese orthography.

The following list gives examples of typical behaviours for characters used in contemporary Balinese. Context may affect the behaviour of some of these and other characters.

Click on the Balinese characters to show what they are.

• ᭚ ᭛ ᭝ ᭞ ᭟ ᭠   should not begin a new line

Baselines, line height, etc.

Balinese uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

fig_baselines shows glyphs from the Noto Serif fonts. The basic height of Balinese letters is the same as the Latin x-height, however extenders and combining marks, extend well beyond the Latin ascenders and descenders, creating a need for larger line heights.

Page & book layout

Terminology

ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭ aksara letter

ᬯ᭄ᬬᬜ᭄ᬚᬦ wianjana consonant

ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭᬯ᭄ᬬᬜ᭄ᬚᬦ aksara wianjana consonant

ᬯᬺᬱᬵᬲ᭄ᬢ᭄ᬭ wreṣāstra 18 consonants used to write basic Balinese words

ᬰ᭄ᬯᬮᬮᬶᬢ sualalita consonants used used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords

ᬅᬮ᭄ᬧᬧ᭄ᬭᬵᬡ alpaprāṇa unaspirated

ᬫᬵᬳᬵᬧ᭄ᬭᬵᬡ mahāprāṇa aspirated

References