Lampung Api Letters

Lampung Api 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, as in nyak 'I', and F, Q, V, X and Z turn up mainly in loanwords and names. CLDR, the Unicode project's locale database, lists Latin (Latn) as the primary script for Lampung Api.

The one sound Indonesian spelling has no letter for is Lampung's throaty r, made at the back of the mouth rather than with the tip of the tongue. Many writers simply write r; others write kh or gh to show it, which is why the same word can turn up in two spellings, as in the bamboo xylophone called gamolan pekhing. Punctuation follows Indonesian too: a hyphen joins doubled words, curly quotation marks “like this” mark speech, and Arabic loanwords keep their apostrophe, as in Assalamu'alaikum.

Dialek Api and dialek Nyo: why the name means 'what'

Lampung is spoken in two main forms, and each is named after its word for 'what'. Speakers of Lampung Api say api; speakers of Lampung Nyo, the Abung and Tulang Bawang (Menggala) people of the north-east, say nyo. Indonesian schoolbooks call them dialek A and dialek O based on the different outcomes of Proto-Lampungic final *a: [a] in Api and [o] in Nyo. The forms differ in many everyday words and in sound, and the language codes treat them as two languages: ljp for Lampung Api and abl for Lampung Nyo.

The Lampung people also divide by custom into two adat groups, which the provincial motto Sai Bumi Ruwa Jurai, 'the land of two lineages', refers to. The Saibatin of the coasts, the Pesisir people, speak Lampung Api. The Pepadun of the interior are mixed: the Abung and Tulang Bawang speak Nyo, while the Pubian, Way Kanan and Sungkai speak Api. So 'dialek Api' is not the same thing as 'adat Saibatin', even though the two are often mentioned together.

Aksara Lampung: Had Lampung, the old script

Before the Latin alphabet, Lampung was written in its own script, Had Lampung, also called aksara Lampung. It belongs to the Kaganga family of southern Sumatra, named after its first letters ka, ga, nga the way 'ABC' names ours. The 1985 teaching standard counts 20 main letters (induk huruf), each with an inherent vowel (a in Api), plus small marks (anak huruf) above, below or beside a letter that change the vowel or add a final consonant. Its disputed twentieth letter, called gha or gra, is a pedagogical addition; historical writing uses ra for the r-like fricative. Schools in Lampung province still teach the script as local content.

Had Lampung has no Unicode block yet, so its letters lack a standard Unicode encoding, and there are no pages for its letters on this site. That is why people set it with special fonts or share it as pictures, charts and calligraphy. Its cousin, the Rejang script, is in Unicode and can be copied from the Rejang collection.

Typing Lampung Api on a phone or computer

Any keyboard set to English or Indonesian types Lampung Api 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 Lampung are in Indonesian rupiah, written Rp before the amount with a dot for thousands (Rp 25.000). The rupiah has no Unicode currency sign, so the two letters are all you need.

Where Lampung Api is spoken

Lampung Api is spoken by an estimated 1.9 million people in Indonesia 🇮🇩, almost all in Lampung, the province at the southern tip of Sumatra facing Java across the Sunda Strait. It is the language of the coasts, from Krui on the Indian Ocean through Tanggamus and Pesawaran to South Lampung, of the highlands around Liwa in West Lampung, and of the Pubian, Way Kanan and Sungkai areas inland. Across the provincial border in South Sumatra, the speech around Lake Ranau belongs to it as well.

Lampung Api and Lampung Nyo form the Lampungic branch of the Austronesian family. Their closest relative outside Lampung is Komering, spoken along the Komering River in South Sumatra, which some linguists count as one more Api dialect. Speakers of Lampung are a minority in their own province, where Javanese and Indonesian are heard as much, and almost every speaker also uses Indonesian; see the Indonesian, Komering, Javanese and Malay collections for the neighbours.