TULDIK IN BAYBAYIN: Part 3 - The Earlier and Later Kudlit in Baybayin

 Diacritical marks that we already have in Baybayin

Originally, Baybayin uses two diacritical marks, it is called kudlit. 

The two Kudlits looks like a point or a dot , and the other one looks like a comma. The dot one is called Tuldok, tuldok-kudlit; and the comma one is called Kuwit, kuwit-kudlit.

In B17 (original way of writing Baybayin) and other earlier ways or methods, tuldok-kudlit and kuwit-kudlit have the same purpose. 

We can use tuldok-kudlit  to make the inherent vowel -a as -i/-e, if place above the base character, and -u/-o if place below. Same with kuwit-kudlit.

For example, the word Sala (filter), the character La has no kudlit, and if we put kudlit above the La either tuldok-kudlit or kuwit-kudlit, it will become Li/Le, Sali (participate) or Sale; and if we place the kudlit below it will be Lu/Lo, Salu or Salo (catch).

But in the following method/ways, the kuwit-kudlit was used to represent the -e and -o alone, while the tuldok-kudlit stays to its original use, which is to represent -i and -u.

We can also see that in the recent method/ways, aside from using kuwit-kudlitto represent -e and -o other signs are used, such as kudlit that looks like a circle, line, tilde, and others.

But we always need to remember that whatever kudlit we use, the tuldok-kudlitwill remain or stays to represent the -i and -u, because it is the original kudlit use in Baybayin. While we can use kuwit-kudlitand other kudlit like circle, tilde, line etc. to represent -e and -o.

This is Part 3 of "Diacritical marks for accent, tone, and pronunciation in Baybayin".

For Part 1 click here

For Part 2 click here

For Part 4 click here

More to follow.