Komering Language Letters

Komering is written in the Latin alphabet with the same spelling rules as Indonesian: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, with no accents and no extra letters. Sounds that need two letters are written as in Indonesian, ng and ny above all, and F, Q, V, X and Z turn up mainly in loanwords and names.

Because the spelling borrows Indonesian conventions, the punctuation does too: a hyphen joins doubled words, curly quotation marks “like this” mark speech, and words from Arabic keep their apostrophe, as in Assalamu'alaikum. CLDR, the Unicode project's locale database, records no alphabet of its own for Komering, which fits: nothing beyond A–Z is needed.

Aksara Komering: the Ka Ga Nga script

Before the Latin alphabet, Komering was written in a script of the Kaganga family, the old writing of southern Sumatra that Indonesian scholars also call surat ulu, 'upriver writing'. The family takes its name from its first three letters, ka, ga and nga, the way 'ABC' names ours. Like its relatives it was written on bamboo, tree bark and horn, and each letter carries a built-in vowel a that small marks change to i, u, e or o.

The Komering form is a close relative of the Lampung script, and a cousin of the Rejang script used further west. Rejang has its own Unicode block, so its letters can be copied from the Rejang collection; the Komering and Lampung forms have no Unicode block yet, so aksara Komering is shared as pictures, charts and calligraphy (kaligrafi aksara Komering) rather than as copyable text, and there are no pages for its letters on this site.

Typing Komering on a phone or computer

Any keyboard set to English or Indonesian types Komering as it is. The only characters worth a shortcut are the curly quotes: on Windows hold Alt and type 0147 for “ and 0148 for ”; on a Mac press Option+[ and Option+Shift+[; on a phone, hold down the " key and pick them from the pop-up. The straight apostrophe ' and the hyphen - are on every keyboard.

Prices in the Komering country are in Indonesian rupiah, written Rp before the amount with a dot for thousands (Rp15.000). The rupiah has no Unicode currency sign, so the two letters are all you need.

Where the Komering language is spoken

Komering is spoken by an estimated 900,000 people in Indonesia 🇮🇩, in the province of South Sumatra. It takes its name from the Komering River 🛶, which flows down from the highlands on the Lampung border and joins the Musi at Palembang. Four regencies of the region carry the river's name (alongside the Ogan's): Ogan Komering Ulu (capital Baturaja), Ogan Komering Ulu Timur (Martapura), Ogan Komering Ulu Selatan (Muaradua) and, downstream, Ogan Komering Ilir (Kayuagung). Ulu means upstream and ilir downstream; Ogan is the neighbouring river.

Komering belongs to the Lampungic branch of the Austronesian family. Its closest relatives are the Lampung languages across the provincial border, especially Lampung Api, and some linguists count Komering as one more Lampung dialect. Most speakers also use Indonesian, and Palembang Malay serves as the common language of South Sumatra; see the Indonesian, Malay, Lampung Api, Rejang and Kerinci collections for the neighbours.