Sundanese

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

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

Structure

An orthographic syllable in modern Sundanese can be described as one of

C {y,r,l} {vs} {ng,r,h}
Cp
V {ng,r,h}

where C is a consonant and V is an independent vowel, y,r,l represents a medial combining character, vs a vowel sign, ng,r,h a syllable-final combining character, and p a vowel-killer.

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. The right-hand column shows standalone vowels.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Below is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Sundanese language.

Inherent vowel

ᮊ ka [U+1B8A SUNDANESE 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.

Vowel basics

Pre-base vowel sign

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

ᮦ

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

show composition

ᮛᮦᮌᮀ

Standalone vowels

Sundanese represents standalone vowels using a set of independent vowel letters, eg. ᮅᮃᮕ᮪ The set includes a character to represent the inherent vowel sound.

Independent vowels can carry syllable-final consonants, eg.

ᮃᮀᮊᮥᮒᮔ᮪

ᮎᮤᮊᮤᮄᮂ

ᮘᮤᮃᮀ

Vowel absence

In modern Sundanese writing suppressed inherent vowels are indicated by either

• using 1BAA
• using a medial consonant diacritic, or
• using a word-final consonant diacritic.

For example, ᮃᮌᮢᮤᮊᮥᮜ᮪ᮒᮥᮁ contains all three (see fig_vowel_absence).

At the end of a word, 1BAA is used, eg. see ᮄᮊᮣᮤᮙ᮪ in fig_final_pamaaeh.

Vowel sounds mapped to characters

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

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

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.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Basic consonants

The Sundanese block has 18 consonant letters for indigenous sounds in modern Sundanese writing.

Repertoire extension

An extended set of consonants is used to represent non-native sounds, eg. Arabic.

Onsets

The three trailing consonants that can appear in syllable-initial pairs are written using dedicated combining marks, eg. ᮄᮊᮣᮤᮙ᮪ ᮃᮌᮢᮤᮊᮥᮜ᮪ᮒᮥᮁ

Finals

The three syllable-final consonant sounds are also represented using dedicated combining marks, eg. ᮙᮀᮌᮥ ᮕᮞᮤᮁ ᮃᮘᮂ-ᮃᮘᮂ

Consonant clusters

Other consonant clusters

In modern Sundanese the absence of a vowel sound between two consonants is shown using a visible vowel killer 1BAA. This produces no special conjunct forms.

show composition

ᮃᮊ᮪ᮞᮛ

Old Sundanese

Historical Sundanese does have conjunct forms. They can be produced using the invisible 1BAB. The following shows known conjuncts:os

Historically, Sundanese also had special forms for subjoined -m and -w. These can be represented using 1BAD and 1BAC.

ᮬ␣ᮭ

Consonant to script mapping

This section maps Sundanese consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Sundanese orthography. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

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.

Other letters

Digits

Sundanese uses native digits, which are decimal-based and used in the same way as European numerals.

To help distinguish the digits from other characters | U+007C VERTICAL LINE is used around numbers.

Context-based shaping & positioning

Sundanese text is not cursive.

Glyph shaping is required for subjoined consonants in Old Sundanese, but doesn't appear to be needed for modern Sundanese orthography.

However, when two diacritics appear in the same position relative to the base character they are positioned side by side, as shown in fig_multiple_diacritics.

Observation: Everson says that the same applies for ᮊᮢᮥ, but the fonts I've tried all render that combination vertically.

For Old Sundanese orthography, positioning rules are also needed to produce conjunct forms.

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Graphemes

tbd

Phrase & section boundaries

Modern Sundanese typically uses ASCII punctuation for sentence and phrase punctuation.

Quotations & citations

Sundanese texts use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.

Line breaking

tbd

No information about whether lines break after syllables or space-separated words.

Baselines, line height, etc.

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

Most Sundanese letters are of a uniform height, but Sundanese places vowel marks and final characters above and below base characters. If the latter occur together, they are typically placed side by side, rather than extending away from the baseline.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Sundanese glyphs from the Noto font. The basic height of Sundanese letters is typically around the Latin cap-height, and combining marks below fit pretty much within the Latin descender height, however combining marks reach above the Latin ascenders, creating a need for larger line spacing.