Javanese

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

i u e o are pronounced ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ, respectively in closed syllables.wl,#Vowels

e and o are pronounced ɛ and ɔ, respectively, in open syllables when followed by one of i u. Otherwise they may be pronounced ə.wl,#Vowels

In the standard dialect of Surakarta, a is pronounced ɔ in word-final open syllables.wl,#Vowels

Diphthongs ai and aw are not used in modern Javanese.ws,#Swara

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b	t d			ʈ ɖ		k g	ʔ
affricates				t͡ʃ
aspirated				t͡ʃʰ
fricatives			s					h
nasals	m		n			ɲ	ŋ
approximants	w		l			j
trills/flaps			r

Most sources (eg. Daniels) imply that the voiced plosives are voicedd. Comriec describes the voiceless plosives as virtually unaspirated, and that the voiced plosives are devoiced at the end of a word. Wikipedia says that the Javanese "voiced" phonemes are in fact voiced voiceless, with breathy voice on the following vowel, the difference being described as stiff voice versus slack voice.wl,#Consonants Here we use the more common transcription.

The sound ʔ appears between words ending with a and the suffix ake, eg. lunga+ake -> lungaʔake.c

Structure

Root words are typically disyllables of the form Cˡ V Cˡ V Cˡ, where Cˡ represents an optional consonant or consonant cluster, and V represents a vowel. Most commonly, this represents CVCVC, followed by CVCCVC.c

A Javanese phonetic syllable can begin with a vowel, a consonant, or a consonant cluster.

Syllable-initial consonant clusters usually have either r or j in the second position, or may have both.

According to Comrie, word-initial consonant clusters may involve prenasalised sounds such as mb, nd, ndh, nj or nng, which appear to be written using unconnected consonants side by side,c eg. ꦩꦧꦸꦫꦸ

Syllable-final consonants are usually a single sound.

In the orthography, phonetic syllable boundaries don't always coincide with the typographic units used. See segmentation for details.

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

The left column shows vowel signs; the right shows standalone letters. ⓘ represents an inherent vowel. A following dotted circle indicates a closed syllable.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

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

Inherent vowels

ꦏ ka ~ kɔ U+A98F JAVANESE LETTER KA

Javanese has two possible inherent vowel sounds: a and ɔ. The choice of inherent vowel can depend on the speaker's dialect: speakers of Western Javanese dialects tend to pronounce the inherent vowel as a, while those of Eastern Javanese prefer ɔ.ws,#Form So ka/kɔ is written by simply using the consonant letter.

Wikipedia describes the following rules by Wewaton Sriwedari for determining the inherent vowel of a letter:ws,#Form

• A letter stands for a syllable with the vowel ɔ if the previous letter contains diacritics.
• A letter stands for a syllable with the vowel a if the following character contains diacritics.
• The first letter of a word normally has the ɔ vowel, unless it precedes two other letters without diacritics, in which case the first letter has the a vowel.

Vowels after consonants

Post-consonant vowels are written using 5 vowel signs, all combining marks. It is mandatory for 2 of the consonant+vowel sequences to be written using vocalics, rather than vowel signs.

There is 1 pre-base glyph and no circumgraphs. Only one multipart vowel is used in modern Javanese orthography, although more exist when writing Sanskrit or Kawi in this script. The multipart vowel used in modern Javanese involves only 2 vowel signs, and places glyphs on either side of the base consonant(s).

Vowel signs

ꦏꦶ ki U+A98F JAVANESE LETTER KA + U+A9B6 JAVANESE VOWEL SIGN WULU

Javanese uses the following dedicated combining marks for vowels. They may be used on their own, or in combination with others (see compositeV).

ꦶ␣ꦸ␣ꦺ␣ꦼ␣ꦴ

Additional information about archaic forms and variants of these characters and others mentioned below can be found in the character notes document.

A9B4 was originally a length mark, but in modern Javanese it is only used in the combination described in the section compositeV.

Modern Javanese doesn't write the sounds rə and lə using the consonant+vowel combinations *ꦫꦼ U+A9AB LETTER RA + U+A9BC VOWEL SIGN PEPET or *ꦭꦼ U+A9AD LETTER LA + U+A9BC VOWEL SIGN PEPET. Vocalic letters are used instead,ws,#Swara eg. ꦊꦩꦃꦊꦩ꧀ꦧꦸꦠ꧀

When a vowel sign follows a subjoined consonant it appears above the stack.

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

Four more vowel signs are not used in modern Javanese.

ꦷ␣ꦹ␣ꦵ␣ꦻ

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 an 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 it is rendered as a conjunct (see prebase).

See also vocalics.

Multipart vowel

ꦺꦴ

In Javanese, unlike many other scripts, including Balinese, when a vowel is represented by multiple glyphs either side of a base character two separate combining marks need to be added to the base. Javanese has no circumgraphs (ie. a single code point that places glyphs around the base).

Only one such multipart vowel is used for modern Javanese, A9BA A9B4, which represents the sound o. Both characters are typed and stored after the base character, and should be in the order shown.

show composition

ꦥꦸꦭꦺꦴ

A two-part vowel associated with a consonant cluster appears before and after the whole cluster, whether it is conjoined or stacked. This is a reminder that vowel signs are applied to the orthographic syllable, rather than to a single letter. In fig_composite_word_break this actually extends across a word boundary, since the last and first letters of the adjoining words form a conjunct cluster. This means that the pre-base part of the vowel sign appears to be within the previous word.

show composition

ꦩꦔꦤ꧀ꦱꦺꦴꦠꦺꦴ

A number of archaic vowels are also represented by combinations of the basic vowel signs, but are not used in modern Javanese.

ꦻꦴ␣ꦼꦵ␣ꦼꦴ

Show details about vowel glyph positioning.

The following list shows where vowel signs are positioned around a base consonant to produce vowels, and how many instances of that pattern there are. The figure after the + sign represents combinations of Unicode characters,

• 2 pre-base, eg. ꦏꦺ ke
• 2 post-base, eg. ꦏꦴ kː
• 3 superscript, eg. ꦏꦶ ki
• 2 subscript, eg. ꦏꦸ ku
• +2 pre+post-base, eg. ꦏꦺꦴ keː

Pre-base vowel sign

ꦺ

One vowel sign appears to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster in modern Javanese.

show composition

ꦒꦿꦺꦗ

This is a combining mark that is always stored after the base consonant. The rendering process places the glyph before the base consonant.

A similar vowel sign is no longer used.

ꦻ

Standalone vowels

Javanese has two ways to represent standalone vowels.

Tones

Javanese is not a tonal language.

Vowel absence

ꦏ꧀ k U+A98F JAVANESE LETTER KA + U+A9C0 JAVANESE PANGKON

Where no letter follows a consonant and the vowel is silent, for example at the end of a sentence or isolated word or before a number, a visible A9C0 is used to indicate that the inherent vowel is suppressed, eg. the example just below the heading of this section explicitly represents just the sound k.

The pangkon is also used to produce conjunct forms for consonant clusters (stacking or conjoined shapes), in which case it is invisible (see clusters). Because Javanese commonly combines the last character of one word and the first of another into a conjunct, the pangkon is often not visible after words that end with a consonant within a sentence.

There are some exceptions, especially where the pangkon may be used to disambiguate words, eg. ꦧꦶꦱ꧀ꦠꦿꦤ꧀​ꦱ꧀ꦗꦏꦂꦠ

No pangkon is needed between an onset consonant and a medial consonant, or after a dedicated final consonant.

Vowel sounds mapped to characters

This section maps Javanese vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Javanese orthography.

The left column contains vowel signs; the right column contains standalone letters. A following circle indicates a closed syllable.

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.

Archaic forms

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

The left-hand column contains basic Javanese consonant letters and consonants using the cecak telu; the right-hand column contains murda and mahaprana letters.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Basic (nglegéna) consonants

Only 20 of the consonants in the Javanese Unicode block are used for pure Javanese language text. Some others (murda) are used as a kind of uppercase letter, but the remainder are used for words derived from Sanskrit or Kawi, or are archaic forms.

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.

A9B2 represents either ha or the standalone vowel a. 

Murda letters

Murda forms can be viewed as a kind of capital letter for proper nouns (not sentence initial letters), used as honorifics. They are used to replace an ordinary letter form in the first syllable of the name. However, not all letters have a murda form, so if there is no letter in the first syllable that has a murda form, one is used for the next syllable in the name that has one.

Highly respected names may be all 'capitalized' to the extent that the corresponding murda are available.

A996 is only attested as a subjoined form, ꧀ꦖ The non-subjoined form shown just above list is a modern-day reinvention.ws,#Wyanjana

A9AF is a rare letter which, when used with other characters, represents the Chinese sound se, ie. ꦯ͜ꦌ̈ Another represents the Chinese syo, ie. ꦯ꦳ꦾꦺꦴ

A9AC not used in modern text, and also not widely known, was used historically by some writers to address royal figures..ws,#Wyanjana

Mahaprana letters

These are letters that are not basic forms, nor are repurposed as murda consonants.

Mahaprana forms were originally aspirated consonants used in Sanskrit and Kawi transliterations (mahaprana means aspirated). They are rarely, if ever, found in modern text.

Repertoire extension

The following combinations, called aksara rékan (ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫꦫꦺꦏꦤ꧀), are used to represent foreign sounds. There may be some variance around which combinations produce which sounds.ws,#R%C3%A9kan

Javanese uses A9B3 with a similar consonant to represent most foriegn sounds, initially those from Arabic, but then also those from Dutch, Indonesian, and English.

A990 is used for writing q in Sasak.

When consonants are subjoined there can be some ambiguity about which consonant the cecak telu applies to. For example, the following look identical:ꦏ꦳꧀ꦗ kˑ͓ʤ kza ꦏ꧀ꦗ꦳ k͓ʤˑ xja

Wikipedia has a set of Chinese sounds that are represented using some combining characters from a non-Javanese block.ws,#Additional_Aksara

Onsets

Three dedicated combining characters represent medial consonants (wyanjana), making it easy to tell that the consonant is part of a syllable-initial cluster and not the start of a new syllable.

Examples of use include ꦥꦿꦩꦸꦏ ꦏꦾꦲꦶꦏꦤ꧀ꦗꦼꦁ ky̆hikn͓ʤəŋ̽ kyai kanjeng ꦕꦕꦶꦁꦏꦽꦩꦶ ʧʧiŋ̽kr̥̆mi cacing kremi

Balinese doesn't have these dedicated medial consonants.

Finals

Word-final consonant sounds with no following consonant may be represented by ordinary consonant characters, followed by a visible A9C0 character, eg. ꦏꦿꦸꦥꦸꦏ꧀ ꦏꦔꦼꦤ꧀

If another word or consonant does follow the word-final consonant, the pangkon is still used, but becomes invisible and results in the stacking of the two consonants. (See clusters.)

However, there is also a set of dedicated combining characters (seisigeg) that dispense with the need for the pangkan.

Four syllable-final consonant sounds are represented using combining characters.

Examples: ꦱꦼꦏꦺꦴꦭꦃ ꦥꦼꦫꦲꦸꦭꦪꦂ ꦥꦼꦠꦼꦁ

Consonant clusters

The absence of a vowel sound after a letter (ie. not involving medial or final consonant diacritics) is shown visually in the script 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 pangkon following the initial consonant.
4. A dedicated final consonant mark followed by a regular consonant.
5. A regular initial consonant followed by a dedicated medial consonant mark.

Word boundaries. Conjuncts span word boundaries. Because there are no spaces between words, consonants with no following vowel at the end of one word and a consonant at the beginning of the next create a cluster.

Stacks and conjoined sequences are not normally split at line ends (see word and linebreak for the ramifications of this). It means that some words cannot be wrapped at word boundaries.

Conjoined consonants

In conjoined clusters, the consonant glyphs remain side by side, but the non-initial consonant is reduced on the left side. fig_conjoined_p shows an example in the word ꦱꦩ꧀ꦥꦸꦤ꧀.

show composition

ꦱꦩ꧀ꦥꦸꦤ꧀

This list shows consonants in their normal and conjoined forms

basic (nglegéna) glyphs

ꦥ꧀ꦥ␣ꦱ꧀ꦱ␣ꦲ꧀ꦲ␣ꦉ꧀ꦉ

murda glyphs

ꦦ꧀ꦦ

mahaprana glyphs

ꦰ꧀ꦰ

The conjoined A9B1 is unusual in that it also adds a glyph (resembling the vowel sign A9B8) below the initial consonant. This helps distinguish it from the conjoined p. See fig_conjoined_p for an example in the word ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫ.

show composition

ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫ

Dedicated medial & final marks

Javanese represents some final consonants using dedicated marks. There are also dedicated marks for medial consonants. Such marks are preceded and/or 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.

show composition

ꦣꦂꦩ

Consonant sounds to characters

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

The left column contains basic, native Javanese letters; the middle column shows murda letters; and the right column contains mahaprana derived forms.

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.

Code point sequences

The following indicates the expected ordering of Unicode characters within a typographic unit for Javanese. The labels are those used for the Unicode Indic Syllabic Categories. Follow that link to see what characters are represented by a given label.

Typographic Unit := (Consonant Nukta* Virama)*
                    Consonant Nukta*
                    Consonant_Medial*
                    Vowel_Dependent*
                    Bindu*
                    Visarga*
                    Consonant_Final*

                 := Vowel_Independent

                 := Consonant Nukta*
                    Virama

It is reported that the independent vowels and numbers may be followed by combining characters.

When multiple dependent vowels appear, they should be in the following order:

Left
Top
Bottom
Right

When multiple medials appear, they should be in the following order:

Bottom_And_Left || Bottom
Bottom_And_Right

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

Context-based shaping & positioning

Shaping

Glyph shaping is required for Javanese. One principle area is that of subjoined or postfixed consonants, which often interact typographically with the preceding consonant.

Not all fonts show the same shaping behaviours.

In fig_k_joins, the three syllables, each containing a k-k stack, show how the font adapts the subjoined A98F at the bottom right according to what follows it.

The following two syllables show how the font changes the shape of A9BF to match the depth of the syllable.

The fig_ku_shaping the font shows different renderings of the u vowel sign after the second character in a consonant cluster. In kru the lines suggest that the medial r is drawn after the u, although it is pronounced the other way around.

Note that the middle cluster contains only one u character. The similar-looking shape in the middle of the word is just part of the kS conjoined shape. The rightmost cluster uses a ligature for -ru, where the chakra appears to be drawn after the u, although actually stored before it.

Letterform slopes, weights, & italics

Observation: Numerous examples of slanted text exist in the publication Kajawen in 1933. However, they are used to distinguish blocks of text from other blocks, but not inline.

Examples of use include separate panels floated alongside the main flow of text (the whole panel is slanted), subheadings or sometimes headings, figure captions, and by-lines.

Word boundaries

Words are not separated by spaces. (Though spaces may be used to separate phrases, see phrase).

As mentioned in the previous section, Javanese is one of a small number of scripts where an initial consonant for a word may be subjoined below the last consonant of a preceding word. Since stacks are never broken, typographic operations such as line-breaking therefore split the text at orthographic syllable boundaries rather than words (see graphemes).

Graphemes

Grapheme clusters alone are not sufficient to represent typographic units in Javanese. 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 A9C0, which has an Indic Syllabic Category of Virama.

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

Javanese 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*

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

1. Cecak telu (nukta) [1] (see extendedC)
2. Medial consonants [3] (see onsets)
3. Vowel signs [5] (see combiningV)
4. Final consonants [4] (see finals)
5. Virama (pangkon) [1] (see novowel)

Javanese grapheme clusters that include a syllable nucleus usually begin with a consonant, but can also begin with an independent vowel, and occasionally numbers also constitute a base (and by some reports may be followed by combining marks).

Syllable codas may be represented by a combining mark, or may be incorporated into a consonant cluster, but they may also be written using a sequence of consonant letter (possibly including a cecak telu) followed by a pangkon, which is visible if no base immediately follows it, eg.

The following examples show a variety of grapheme clusters:

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

	ꦠꦶꦂꦠ
	ꦏꦿꦶꦪ
	ꦱꦼꦏꦺꦴꦭꦃ
	ꦏꦔꦼꦤ꧀
	ꦏꦤ꧀ꦛꦶ
	ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫ

Note how grapheme clusters break up the conjuncts in the last 2 examples. This is not usually desirable (see orthographicS just below).

Larger typographic units

(Base Cecak_telu? Pangkon)* Grapheme_cluster

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

Javanese 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_pangandika for an example.

Grapheme clusters terminate after a sequence of marks containing a pangkon, 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 A9C0, and the final grapheme cluster begins with a consonant.

The following are examples. The first 2 examples were shown in the previous section: here the conjunct is treated as a single typographic unit.

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

	ꦏꦤ꧀ꦛꦶ
	ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫ
	ꦏꦭꦶꦱ꧀ꦠꦿꦶꦏꦤ꧀

Note that one of the characteristic features of the Indic category of Virama is that the pangkon is visible when not followed by a consonant, but invisible when a consonant does follow (creating a stack). This means that the pangkon 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 a pangkon 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.

Phrase & section boundaries

Javanese uses a set of native punctuation marks.

If the final word in a phrase ends with A9C0, a space alone is sufficient to indicate a phrase boundary. Otherwise, A9C8 is used.

A9C7 is equivalent to a colon.

The sequence A9C0 A9C8 indicates a sentence boundary. If there is no pangkon, A9C9 is used.

All of the above punctuation marks are optionally followed by a space, if they occur inside a paragraph.

A paragraph and or a section typically begins with A9CB. This punctutation is also used before other short runs of text, such as subtitles, list items, etc.

A9CA is a general divider. See also quotations.

Quotations & citations

As for parentheses, Javanese text may use A9CA for quotation marks.

Alternatively, the pair of characters A9CC and A9CD may be used.

Emphasis

To draw attention to text Javanese may use the same characters as are used for parentheses and quotations, ie. a paired set of A9CA characters around the relevant text, or the two characters A9CC and A9CD can be used similarly.

Sometimes just A9CC is repeated.

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

Inline notes & annotations

Line breaking & hyphenation

Like Tibetan, line breaking can occur after any full orthographic syllable, however no conjuncts are split during line breaking.

Observation: Does a 'full' orthographic syllable include a syllable coda written as a normal consonant letter followed by pangkon? Does that need to be wrapped with the syllable onset and nucleus?

Because there are no spaces between words, and because the end of one word and the beginning of another often form conjuncts (see fig_pangandika), Javanese doesn't wrap at word boundaries. Instead, it wraps at syllable boundaries where no conjuncts are involved.

Unfortunately, modern browsers are often unable to detect appropriate break points for Javanese. 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.

Hyphenation, per se, is not used. See an interesting discussion about Javanese & Balinese line-breaking on GitHub.

Taling duplication

In some materials, when a new line begins with A9BA, an additional spacing taling is placed at the end of the previous line.

In online use, an application would need to create the extra taling, 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 an extra taling is only appropriate at those instants when the taling happens to appear at the line start.

Text alignment & justification

Observation: Articles in the Kajawen publication are fully justified. The justification algorithm appears to stretch spaces, which generally occur on each line, and also to slightly stretch inter-character spaces. In the latter case, stacks and super-/subscript diacritics are not affected, but space is added between pre-base vowel signs and base characters, and between base characters and conjoined characters.

Baselines, line height, etc.

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

Javanese requires far more vertical space than Latin text. To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Javanese glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic height of Javanese letters is typically around the Latin x-height, but the overall height is 2 to 3 times that of the Latin letters, creating a need for much larger line spacing.

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Tuladha Jejeg and Javanese Text fonts.