Updated 2 May, 2025
This page brings together basic information about the Buginese script and its use for the Buginese/Bugis language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Buginese using Unicode.
Richard Ishida, Buginese (Bugis) Orthography Notes, 02-May-2025, https://r12a.github.io/scripts/bugi/bug
ᨔᨗᨔᨗᨊᨗᨊ ᨑᨘᨄ ᨈᨕᨘ ᨑᨗ ᨍᨍᨗᨕᨂᨗ ᨑᨗᨒᨗᨊᨚᨕᨙ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨆᨊᨙᨂᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨂᨙ ᨕᨒᨙᨅᨗᨑᨙ᨞ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨂᨙ ᨕᨀᨒᨙ᨞ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨂᨙ ᨕᨈᨗ ᨆᨑᨙᨊᨗ ᨊ ᨔᨗᨅᨚᨒᨙ ᨅᨚᨒᨙᨊ ᨄᨉ ᨔᨗᨄᨀᨈᨕᨘ ᨄᨉ ᨆᨔᨒᨔᨘᨑᨙ᨞
Source: Unicode UDHR, article 1
Origins of the Buginese script, 14thC – today.
Phoenician
└ Aramaic
└ Brahmi
└ Tamil-Brahmi
└ Pallava
└ Old Kawi
└ Buginese
+ Balinese
+ Batak
+ Baybayin
+ Javanese
+ Makasar
+ Old Sundanese
+ Rencong
+ Rejang
The Buginese or Lontara script was traditionally used to write the Bugis, Makassarese and Mandar languages of Sulawesi in Indonesia. During the period of Dutch colonisation, it was largely replaced by the Latin alphabet, and is now considered to be endangered. However, it still persists for ceremonial purposes, such as weddings, and for writing personal documents such as letters and notes. There is also some use for printing traditional Buginese literature.
ᨒᨚᨈᨑ
ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ
The script is originally derived from the Brahmi script, but has evolved considerably along similar lines to other scripts in the Indonesian archipelago. Wikipedia relates that the term Lontara "is derived from the Malay name for palmyra palm, lontar, whose leaves are traditionally used for manuscripts. In Buginese, this script is called urupu sulapa eppa which means "four-cornered letters", referencing the Bugis-Makasar belief of the four elements that shaped the universe: fire, water, air and earth."
Sources: Scriptsource, Wikipedia.
The Buginese script, also known as Lontara (ᨒᨚᨈᨑ), is an abugida. Consonants carry an inherent vowel which can be modified by appending vowel signs to the consonant. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern Buginese orthography.
Modern Buginese runs left to right in horizontally stacked lines.
Words can be separated by spaces, or spaces can be used to separate units longer than words. In some texts words are not separated at all. There is no case distinction.
Buginese has 18 basic consonants, but is a defective script, meaning that it doesn't represent all the sounds of the spoken language.
With the exception of prenasalised onsets, no consonant clusters or gemination are indicated by the Buginese orthography. Single code points are, however, provided for 4 syllable-initial prenasalised clusters.
Syllable-final consonant sounds are not written.
❯ basicV
The Buginese orthography is an abugida with one inherent vowel a. Other post-consonant vowels are written using 5 vowel signs. All vowel signs are combining marks, and are stored after the base character.
There is 1 pre-base vowel but no circumgraphs. There are also no multipart vowels, but repetition can be shown by duplication of the vowel sign.
Standalone vowel sounds are written using vowel signs applied to ᨕ.
There are no native numbers.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
There's something odd here and later about a vs ə. Need to figure out which is right.
| labial | alveolar | post- alveolar |
palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stops | p b | t d | c ɟ | k ɡ | ʔ | |
| pre-nasalised | ᵐp | ⁿc | ᵑk | |||
| fricatives | s | h | ||||
| nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| approximants | w | l | j | |||
| trills/flaps | r | |||||
| pre-nasalised | ⁿr | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
This table summarises basic vowel to character assignments.
ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Diacritics are added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here).
| post-consonant | standalone | |
|---|---|---|
| All: | ||
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
ᨀ ka U+1A00 BUGINESE 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, eg.
ᨀᨆᨗᨔᨗ
ᨀᨗ ki U+1A00 BUGINESE LETTER KA + U+1A17 BUGINESE VOWEL SIGN I
Buginese uses the following dedicated combining marks for vowels.
Two vowel signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.
An orthography that uses vowel signs is different from one that uses simple diacritics or letters for vowels in that the vowel signs are generally attached to the orthographic syllable, rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. This means that pre-base vowel signs and the left glyph of circumgraphs appear before a whole consonant cluster if the cluster is rendered as a conjunct (see prebase).
ᨀᨙ ke U+1A00 BUGINESE LETTER KA + U+1A19 BUGINESE VOWEL SIGN E
One vowel sign appears to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster (see the example in fig_prebase).
This is a combining mark that is always stored after the base consonant. The font places the glyph before the base consonant.
ᨕᨔᨙ
Because a vowel sign is associated with a syllable, rather than the immediately preceding consonant, the vowel sign doesn't need to split letters that represent pre-nasalised consonants (see clusters), eg. ᨋᨙ nre
Buginese uses 1A15 to represent the sound a when there is no preceding consonant.
Other syllable-initial vowel sounds are written using the same character with vowel signs attached.
ᨕᨛᨊᨛ
This section maps Bugis vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Buginese orthography.
dependent ᨗ
standalone ᨕᨗ
ligature ᨕᨗᨐ
dependent ᨘ
standalone ᨕᨘ
dependent ᨙ
standalone ᨕᨙ
dependent ᨚ
standalone ᨕᨚ
dependent ᨛ
standalone ᨕᨛ
inherent vowel eg. ᨅᨗᨌᨑ
standalone ᨕ
This table summarises basic consonant to character assignments.
| Onsets | |
|---|---|
| Onset clusters |
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
These are the basic consonant letters in Buginese.
Click on each letter for more details and for examples of usage.
ᨖ was introduced to represent an Arabic sound.
Four dedicated characters are used to represent pre-nasalised consonant clusters in Buginese (but not Makassarese).
Syllable-final consonant sounds (normally ʔ and ŋ) are not written, eg. the final consonant sound is not written at the end of ᨕᨙᨔᨙᨊᨙ
Other than the prenasalised onsets mentioned just above, Buginese doesn't mark clusters.u There is no virama-like character, and Buginese has no way to indicate missing vowels between consonants or at the end of a word.
Geminated consonants sounds (which are contrastive and frequent in Buginese) are not written, eg. the following sequence can be read as lapa lava or lappa joint ᨒᨄ lp
These omissions can lead to ambiguities in the written text that are exploited for Buginese word games.
This section maps Bugis consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Buginese orthography.
consonant ᨄ
digraph ᨇ
consonant ᨅ
consonant ᨈ
consonant ᨉ
consonant ᨌ
digraph ᨏ
consonant ᨍ
consonant ᨀ
digraph ᨃ
consonant ᨁ
consonant Occurs in syllable-final position, but is not written, eg. ᨒᨚᨈᨑ
consonant ᨔ
consonant ᨖ
consonant ᨆ
consonant ᨊ
consonant ᨎ
consonant ᨂ Not written when syllable-final.
consonant ᨓ
consonant ᨑ
digraph ᨋ
consonant ᨒ
consonant ᨐ
A photo on Flickr shows a sign (associated with Makassar) with consonant clusters using what looks like 1A18 between the characters. There is also a syllable-final -r represented by ᨑ.
Still in the same picture is ᨄ, being used to represent the sound f.
Wikipedia mentions some recent proposals for diacritics to represent virama, anusvara, and glottal stop. The Unicode document repository has several documents proposing the addition of a virama character.
Everson also lists 6 punctuation marks, based on western semantics but with Buginese shapes, that are not in the Unicode block.
A number of proposals for extending the Buginese script to cover additional languages were raised in 2016.
Buginese has no native digits.
Buginese runs left to right in horizontally stacked lines.
In older journal text when space runs out on a page, scribes used to run the text into the margin and continue in bostrophedon arrangements.
Show default bidi_class properties for characters in the Buginese orthography described here.
You can experiment with examples using the Buginese character app.
The only glyph shaping seems to be in connection with the iya ligature, 1A15 1A17 200D 1A10. The initial 1A15 is hidden in the ligature ᨕᨗᨐ
The positioning of diacritics depends on the related base components, eg. compare ᨊᨗᨊ nin ninᨕᨗᨐ ǝ̣iy iya ᨐᨗ yi yi
One vowel sign, 1A19, is displayed to the left of the base consonant, although it is typed after the consonant, eg. ᨕᨙᨔᨙᨊᨙ
Words can be separated by spaces, or spaces can be used to separate units longer than words. In some texts words are not separated at all.
tbd
Buginese uses very little punctuation, and it is native.
| phrase/sentence | 0020 ᨞ |
|---|---|
| section end | ᨟ |
For separators at the sentence level and below, Buginese typically uses only one punctuation mark, ᨞, which is equivalent to both comma and full stop in Latin transcriptions of Buginese.
The end of a section may be shown with ᨟.
Everson lists some additional punctuation marks, but these don't appear to be supported by Unicode.e
᨞ can also be used to indicate the doubling of a word or its root, according to Wikipedia. The Unicode Standard says that ꧏ [U+A9CF JAVANESE PANGRANGKEP] may be used for this purpose.
Alternatively, the Unicode Standard says, repetition can be shown by duplication of the vowel sign, especially 1A19 and 1A1A.
tbd
Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Buginese orthography.
According to Everson, in-word line-breaks (hyphenation) can occur after any full orthographic syllable, but there are no details about how that works, or whether he actually means line-breaking, rather than hyphenation per-se.
tbd
Buginese uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.