Updated 14 November, 2022
This page brings together basic information about the Sundanese script and its use for the Sundanese language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Sundanese using Unicode.
ᮞᮊᮥᮙ᮪ᮔ ᮏᮜ᮪ᮙ ᮌᮥᮘᮢᮌ᮪ ᮊ ᮃᮜᮙ᮪ ᮓᮥᮑ ᮒᮨᮂᮞᮤᮖᮒ᮪ᮔ ᮙᮨᮛ᮪ᮓᮤᮊ ᮏᮩᮀ ᮘᮧᮌ ᮙᮛ᮪ᮒᮘᮒ᮪ ᮊᮒᮥᮒ᮪ ᮠᮊ᮪-ᮠᮊ᮪ ᮃᮔᮥ ᮞᮛᮥᮃ. ᮙᮛᮔᮨᮂᮔ ᮓᮤᮘᮨᮛᮨ ᮃᮊᮜ᮪ ᮏᮩᮀ ᮠᮒᮨ ᮔᮥᮛᮔᮤ, ᮎᮙ᮪ᮕᮥᮁ-ᮌᮅᮜ᮪ ᮏᮩᮀ ᮞᮞᮙᮔ ᮃᮚ ᮓᮤᮔ ᮞᮥᮙᮔᮨᮒ᮪ ᮓᮥᮓᮥᮜᮥᮛᮔ᮪.
Since 1996 the Sundanese script has been the official orthography for the 27 million Sundanese speakers on the island of Java, although the Latin script is also used. It is currently taught in schools and used for public signage.
ᮃᮊ᮪ᮞᮛ ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ ạkˣsr sunˣd aksara sunda Sundanese alphabet
The modern orthography is derived from the Old Sundanese orthography (Aksara Sunda Kuno) which was used by the Sundanese between the 14th and 18th centuries. It, in turn, derived from the Pallava script.
Source: Scriptsource, Wikipedia.
Sundanese is an abugida, ie. consonants carry an inherent vowel sound that is overridden, where needed, using vowel signs. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern Sundanese orthography.
Sundanese text runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Words are separated by spaces.
The 18 native consonant letters are supplemented by 7 more used for non-native sounds, such as those from Arabic.
The inherent vowel is a, and other vowels are represented by 6 vowel-signs (including 1 prescript). All vowel-signs are combining marks, and are stored after the base character. There are no composite vowels.
Independent vowels are used for standalone vowel sounds,
Syllable-initial clusters use 3 dedicated combining marks for the second consonant.
Syllable-final consonant sounds are also represented by 3 dedicated combining marks. When a vowel-sign and final consonant are both attached to the same base, they are arranged side by side.
Other consonant clusters are indicated by a visible mark called pamaaeh. There are no stacked consonants or other conjuncts in modern Sundanese, however they were used in the Old Sundanese orthography.
Sundanese has a set of native digits, but uses ASCII punctutation.
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.
These are sounds for the Sundanese language.
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.
| labial | dental | 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 | |||||||
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Click on the characters in the lists for detailed information.
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 ᮊ [U+1B8A SUNDANESE LETTER KA].
Non-inherent vowel sounds that follow a consonant can be represented using vowel-signs, eg. kiː is written ᮊᮤ [U+1B8A SUNDANESE LETTER KA + U+1BA4 SUNDANESE VOWEL SIGN PANGHULU].
Sundanese uses the following vowel-signs.
Sundanese vowel-signs are all combining characters, and a single character is used per base consonant. All vowel-signs are stored after the base consonant, and the font puts them in the correct place for display.
Two vowel-signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.
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.
In modern Sundanese writing suppressed inherent vowels are indicated by either
For example, ᮃᮌᮢᮤᮊᮥᮜ᮪ᮒᮥᮁ contains all three (see fig_vowel_absence).
At the end of a word, ᮪ [U+1BAA SUNDANESE SIGN PAMAAEH] is used, eg. see ᮄᮊᮣᮤᮙ᮪ in fig_final_pamaaeh.
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.
Click on the characters in the lists for detailed information.
The Sundanese block has 18 consonant letters for indigenous sounds in modern Sundanese writing.
An extended set of consonants is used to represent non-native sounds, eg. Arabic.
Syllable-initial consonant clusters allow 3 sounds after the initial consonant, j, r, or l. These are all represented using dedicated combining marks (see onsets).
In modern Sundanese the absence of a vowel sound between two consonants is shown using a visible vowel killer ᮪ [U+1BAA SUNDANESE SIGN PAMAAEH]. This produces no special conjunct forms.
Historical Sundanese does have conjunct forms. They can be produced using the invisible ᮫ U+1BAB SUNDANESE SIGN VIRAMA. The following shows known conjuncts:os
Historically, Sundanese also had special forms for subjoined -m and -w. These can be represented using ᮭ [U+1BAD SUNDANESE CONSONANT SIGN PASANGAN WA] and ᮬ [U+1BAC SUNDANESE CONSONANT SIGN PASANGAN MA].
The three trailing consonants that can appear in syllable-initial pairs are written using dedicated combining marks, eg. ᮄᮊᮣᮤᮙ᮪ ᮃᮌᮢᮤᮊᮥᮜ᮪ᮒᮥᮁ
The three syllable-final consonant sounds are also represented using dedicated combining marks, eg. ᮙᮀᮌᮥ ᮕᮞᮤᮁ ᮃᮘᮂ-ᮃᮘᮂ
ᮺ [U+1BBA SUNDANESE AVAGRAHA] is an archaic letter used for writing Sanskrit.
For reproduction of Old Sundanese writing there are 5 additional characters:
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.
Observation: Unlike other punctuation, the vertical lines don't appear to be slanted to the right, and in the Noto Sans font this produces an effect that looks like the vertical line is ligated with some of the digits, eg. |᮷|.
Sundanese runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Show default bidi_class properties for characters in the Sundanese orthography described here.
This section brings together information about the following topics: writing styles; cursive text; context-based shaping; context-based positioning; baselines, line height, etc.; font styles; case & other character transforms.
You can experiment with examples using the Sundanese character app.
The orthography has no case distinction, and no special transforms are needed to convert between characters.
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.
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.
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Words are separated by spaces.
Modern Sundanese typically uses ASCII punctuation for sentence and phrase punctuation.
| phrase | , [U+002C COMMA] ; [U+003B SEMICOLON] : [U+003A COLON] |
|---|---|
| sentence | . [U+002E FULL STOP] ? [U+003F QUESTION MARK] ! [U+0021 EXCLAMATION MARK] |
The punctuation described here is used for Old Sundanese texts, and is not used for modern Sundanese.
| phrase | In Old Sundanese, if ᳀ [U+1CC0 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU SURYA] is used as a full stop, ᳂ [U+1CC2 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU PURNAMA] is used as a comma. Otherwise ᳃ [U+1CC3 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU CAKRA] may be used as a comma in older texts. |
|---|---|
| sentence | ᳀ [U+1CC0 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU SURYA] may be used in Old Sundanese texts. |
Religious texts in Old Sundanese contain ᳆᳀᳆ and ᳆᳁ markers, which include additional code points ᳆ [U+1CC6 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU DA SATANGA], and ᳁ [U+1CC1 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU PANGLONG].
Historical texts in Old Sundanese contain ᳅᳂᳅ markers, with the additional code point ᳅ [U+1CC5 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU KA SATANGA].
Other similar code points include ᳄ [U+1CC4 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU LEU SATANGA] and ᳇ [U+1CC7 SUNDANESE PUNCTUATION BINDU BA SATANGA].
Sundanese commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.
| start | end | |
|---|---|---|
| standard | ( [U+0028 LEFT PARENTHESIS] |
) [U+0029 RIGHT PARENTHESIS] |
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.
| start | end | |
|---|---|---|
| initial | ” [U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK] | |
| nested | ’ [U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK] |
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No information about whether lines break after syllables or space-separated words.
Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Sundanese orthography.
According to Everson, hyphenation can occur after any full orthographic syllable, but there are no details about how that works.
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This section looks at ways in which spacing is applied between characters over and above that which is introduced during justification.
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Sundanese uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.
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This section is for any features that are specific to Sundanese and that relate to the following topics: general page layout & progression; grids & tables; notes, footnotes, etc; forms & user interaction; page numbering, running headers, etc.