Hanunó’o

Plain vowels

Consonant sounds

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p b	t d		k ɡ	ʔ
fricative	f	s			h
nasal	m	n		ŋ
approximant	w	l	j
trill/flap		r

Tone

Hanunó’o is not a tonal language.

Structure

Hanunoo syllable types include:

CV | CVC

Vowel summary

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. The left column shows dependent vowels, and the right independent.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Below is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Hanunó’o language.

Inherent vowel

ᜣ ka U+1723 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.

Post-consonant vowels

ᜣᜲ ki U+1723 LETTER KA + U+1732 VOWEL SIGN I

Hanunó’o uses only two combining marks for vowels when it is necessary to override the inherent vowel.

Each vowel sign represents one of 2 sounds. 1732 represents either the sound i or the sound e; 1733 represents either o or u.

In principle, the glyphs look the same, and the distinction is made by position: i ~ e goes above the base, and o ~ u goes below. However, in practise, although the relative height distinction is always preserved, the way the vowel sign connects with the base varies from consonant to consonant. The differences are significant enough to make it worthwhile to show all possible combinations in the table below.

Standalone vowels

ᜠ a U+1720 LETTER A

Vowels at the beginning of a word or following another vowel are actually transcribed in IPA with a preceding glottal stop (ʔ), but they are written using one of 3 independent vowel letters.

As with the vowel signs, these letters each represent one of two possible sounds. (See the box above.)

ᜠᜥ᜴ᜪᜳ

ᜡᜮᜳᜥ

ᜢᜩᜦ᜴

Consonants without vowels

In the 1950s a Dutch anthropologist introduced 1734 as a way to indicate consonants without a following vowel. This was taken up by the users of this orthography, and is now in general use.

It is used to indicate syllable codas both at the end of a word and within a word.

ᜪᜳᜱᜳᜣ᜴

ᜮᜤ᜴ᜨᜰ᜴

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Hanunó’o vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Hanunó’o orthography.

The left column shows dependent vowels; the right column shows independent vowel letters.

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

Stops

Fricatives

Nasals

Other sonorants

Grapheme clusters

Base Combining_mark*

Hanunó’o typographic units consist of a letter or a letter with a single combining mark (one of two vowel signs). Both of these units fit the definition of a grapheme cluster.

As previously noted, syllable codas are not written in Hanunó’o text, and so the segmentation only captures onsets and the syllable nucleus.

Phrase & section boundaries

Hanunó’o uses ᜵ for a short pause, and ᜶ for a longer or sentence-like pause. It may also be used at the end of a poem.

Line breaking & hyphenation

The primary line-break opportunity occurs at word boundaries.

Baselines, line height, etc.

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

Hanunó’o letters vary slightly in height but are mostly around the same, with no ascenders and only tiny descenders. Vowel signs may appear above or below some letters, but these are horizontal dashes. Vowel signs for u~o tend to be attached to most letters above the base line.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Hanunó’o glyphs from the Noto Sans font. The basic height of Hanunó’o letters is typically very slightly above the Latin x-height, however some punctuation marks and combining marks can reach just beyond the Latin ascenders (but not the descenders), creating a need for very slightly larger line spacing.