Batak languages

Plain vowels

ə is present only in Karo and Pakpak. The languages of the southern group substitute the sound o in words that are otherwise the same.

Vowel signs

ᯂᯪ kiː U+1BC2 BATAK LETTER HA + U+1BEA BATAK VOWEL SIGN I

Non-inherent vowel sounds that follow a consonant are represented using vowel signs, eg.

Batak vowel signs are all combining characters. All vowel signs are stored after the base consonant. There are no vowel signs displayed before the base, and there are no circumgraphs.

An orthography that uses vowel signs is different from one that uses simple diacritics or letters for vowels in that the vowel signs may be attached to the syllable onset , rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. See finals.

Four vowel signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.

Combining marks used for vowels

Batak languages use the following dedicated combining marks for vowels. Some languages have additional sounds, and some assign the same symbols to different sounds.

Vowel signs

The normal approach combines a vowel sign with ᯀ (or ᯁ in Simalungun).

ᯀᯮᯅᯉ᯲ ᯀᯮᯑᯉ᯲

Independent vowels

Batak has independent vowels for 3 sounds. The use of ᯤ and ᯥ, rather than the vowel sign combinations shown above, is optional, and spelling of words may vary even within the same document.ab

ᯤᯉ ᯥᯑᯉ᯲ ᯀᯎᯂ᯲

ᯀ may also represent the sound ha for Pakpak and Karo. The reading is ambiguous.

Plain vowels

Diphthongs and other combinations

Stops

Affricates

Fricatives

Nasals

Approximants

Vowel reordering

Batak has a unique behaviour if a vowel sign is used between onset and coda consonants.

Although consonants and vowels are typed and stored in the order they are pronounced, the rendered order is:
<onset><coda><vowel><vowel-killer>

If a vowel sign is used, the glyphs for the onset and coda consonants are placed side by side, and are followed by the glyphs for the intervening vowel and the vowel-killer. This reordering is produced by the font, and the typed order or order stored in memory remains the same as the spoken order. fig_finals shows an example.

This also applies to non-spacing marks, such as -u in the following.

ᯐᯒᯮᯔ᯲

Phrase & section boundaries

Batak is normally written as an unbroken sequence of letters, without punctuation other than a few paragraph or section dividers.

The Unicode repertoire includes code points for the following bindu.

᯿ is used to disambiguate text and follows a word, partially surrounding the final letter.

᯼ and ᯽ are used to indicate the beginning of paragraphs and stanzas. It can be written as a large sign that physically separates the sections of text, eg. by means of a long trailing line leading from it.

᯾ is used to separate a title from the following text.

Batak also uses symbols to begin texts which do not appear to have Unicode code points. These are often decorative and take many forms.

A pustaha text (see generallayout) will often begin with a godang bindu, while bamboo texts will commonly begin with the pinarjolma bindu.

Line breaking & hyphenation

The rules for where line-break opportunities occur are not very clear. The following paragraphs describe alternative approaches. After each description, the effect is shown on line-break opportunities for the word ᯂᯔ᯳ᯇᯪᯞ᯳ .

Currently, Unicode properties assigned to Batak letters have the value AL (ordinary alphabetic and symbol characters), which requires other characters to provide break opportunities; otherwise, unless tailored rules are applied, no line breaks are allowed between pairs of letters. This is clearly inappropriate for Batak, given the lack of spaces and the paucity of punctuation marks. As a result, Batak text usually runs off the right edge of a web page, because the line is not broken.

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the Batak orthography described here.

Everson & Kozok, in their Batak Unicode proposalek, say that lines are broken after a 'full orthographic syllable', which they define to be C(V(Cp|F)) where a consonant C may be followed by a vowel V which may be followed either by a killed consonant Cp or a final -ng or -h F. This actually represents a full phonetic syllable, including cases such as ᯂᯂ᯲ kak.

On the other hand, proposals are currently being discussed by the Unicode Script Ad Hoc committee to break after a BCCS except where a vowel-killer appears – in which case, the whole phonetic syllable would be kept together. The latter exception is primarily motivated by the limitations of current rendering systems, which would struggle to achieve the reordering of final-consonant and vowel sign before a vowel-killer if a line-break intervenes.

However, it is not hard to find examples of written Batak where line-breaks can occur before a vowel sign or a vowel-killer, indicating that line-break opportunities can occur before any spacing glyph. Note that the vowel sign and vowel-killer are represented in Unicode as combining marks, so we are splitting the BCCS unit here. Note also that the order of characters doesn't change. For examples, see handwritten examples of line-initial vowel-killer, and vowel sign, and both in this printed text.

If line-breaks were introduced at grapheme cluster boundaries, the order of characters in a syllable rendered as CCVv would presumably not be maintained, so this does not appear to be a viable approach.

Baselines, line height, etc.

tbd

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

General page layout & progression

The following is a description of media used for writing Batak, taken from Wikipediawsi,#Media.

Batak letters are traditionally written in a number of media, among which the most common are bamboo, bone, and bark. Manuscripts with these media can be found in various sizes and sophistication.

Common everyday writings are inscribed on the surface of bamboo or bone with a small knife. These strokes are then blackened with soot to improve readability. Bamboo and bones written on Batak letters are commonly used as daily tools, for example as storage tubes for areca nut or necklaces as well as amulets to ward off evil.

Traditional Batak priests (datu) write their knowledge on concertina-like scrolls called pustaha. To make pustaha, the bark of the agarwood tree ( Aquilaria malaccensis) is cut and mashed into long sheets called laklak . The length of these sheets can range from 60 cm to 7 m, but the largest known pustaha (now stored in the Tropenmuseum, Netherlands) is around 15 m long. This sheet of laklak is then folded, and both ends glued to a wooden cover called lampak, which often has a Boraspati lizard engraved on it. Unlike the bamboo and bone script, the Pustaha script is written in ink using a pen from the ribs of palm leaves (Arenga pinnata) called suligi or a pen from buffalo horn called tahunan.

Paper was only used in limited quantities from the mid-19th century onwards, but bamboo, bone, and bark continued to be used as the main medium for writing Batak script until the 20th century when the tradition of writing Batak script began to disappear.