Buginese letter ba

Use a Lontara keyboard layout and enter ᨅ as ba.

Each consonant letter carries an inherent a vowel, so ᨅ reads as ba by default; a vowel sign changes that vowel. Traditional Lontara does not join consonants into clusters and usually leaves word-final consonants unmarked, so borrowed words may need an added sign or an adapted spelling.

As of 2026, the Lontar Aksara Nusantara keyboard enters the preposed e-vowel sign ᨙ before its consonant; a dotted circle marks the base that has not been entered yet.

What does ᨅ mean?

It is a Lontara letter, not a standalone word.

Lontara writes Bugis, Makasar and Mandar. By itself, ᨅ is best read as a quoted letter or a fragment of writing; surrounding text shows which word it belongs to.

Where did Lontara come from?

Lontara developed in South Sulawesi around 1400.

Buginese writing is attested as early as the fourteenth century; detailed reconstruction places its development in the Cenrana–Walannae region around 1400. The earliest written evidence is genealogical: records of family descent and status.

Ruling elites used early Lontara to record descent and status. Later it carried chronicles, diaries, poetry, religious stories, medical writing, epics and history. Palm-leaf forms favored straight angles; paper, available in the early seventeenth century, allowed faster, more varied ink curves. The digital core follows printing forms from the mid-nineteenth century and omits some handwritten variants. Lontara belongs to a script family descended from Brahmi, an older writing system. Kawi is a common ancestor of several Indonesian scripts; Buginese may be related to Javanese and has a broader script connection with Tagalog.