Sundanese Alphabet & Script

Sundanese (basa Sunda) is the language of West Java and Banten on the Indonesian island of Java. Today it is written mostly in the Latin alphabet: newspapers, novels, school books, song lyrics and every chat message. The letters are the familiar A to Z plus one accented letter, é (capital É); the vowel eu and the consonants ng and ny are written as two letters each, and f, q, v, x and z turn up mainly in loanwords and names.

Sundanese also has a script of its own, Aksara Sunda. Its ancestor, Old Sundanese script, was carved into stone inscriptions and written on palm-leaf manuscripts of the Sundanese kingdoms, and like Javanese ꦲꦤꦕꦫꦏ and Balinese ᬳᬦᬘᬭᬓ it belongs to the family of Indic scripts that reached the Indonesian islands from India, tracing back to the Pallava script and ultimately to Brahmi (Kawi was also used to write Old Sundanese). For centuries Sundanese was also written in a Javanese-style script (cacarakan) and in Arabic letters (pégon). In the 1990s the West Java provincial government standardised a modern form, Aksara Sunda Baku, which is now taught in schools and seen on street-name signs, government buildings and monuments across the province.

Sundanese letters: é, e and eu, plus ng and ny

Sundanese has seven vowels, and its spelling gives each a separate form. Five are the familiar a, i, o, u and é. é is the full, clear e of méja (table), saé (good, polite) and rampés, the reply to the greeting sampurasun. Plain e without an accent is a different sound, the short neutral vowel called pepet, like the a of English 'about': enjing (morning), wilujeng (blessed, happy). The word gedé (big) has both, one after the other.

The seventh vowel is eu, a sound English does not have, made with the tongue in the middle of the mouth and the lips spread, roughly an i said with the tongue drawn back. It is one vowel written with two letters, as in geulis (pretty), ngeunah (tasty) and peuyeum, the fermented cassava Bandung is known for. Likewise ng (Bandung) and ny (nyanyi, to sing) are single consonants written as pairs. So the only character you ever need beyond a plain English keyboard is é; in quick chat many people skip the accent and write meja, but é is the standard spelling.

How Aksara Sunda works: ngalagena, swara and rarangkén

Aksara Sunda is an abugida: every consonant letter carries the vowel a, so ᮊ reads ka and ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ is Sunda. The 18 basic consonants (aksara ngalagena) are ka ga nga ᮊ ᮌ ᮍ, ca ja nya ᮎ ᮏ ᮑ, ta da na ᮒ ᮓ ᮔ, pa ba ma ᮕ ᮘ ᮙ, ya ra la ᮚ ᮛ ᮜ and wa sa ha ᮝ ᮞ ᮠ. Five more, fa va qa xa za ᮖ ᮗ ᮋ ᮟ ᮐ, belong to the standard set for loanwords, and kha ᮮ and sya ᮯ serve words from Arabic. Aksara Sunda writes a syllable that starts with a vowel with its own vowel letter (aksara swara), in the order a é i o u e eu: ᮃ ᮆ ᮄ ᮇ ᮅ ᮈ ᮉ, so aksara is ᮃᮊ᮪ᮞᮛ.

Small signs called rarangkén do the rest. Six change the vowel: panéléng ᮦ (é, written before the letter), panghulu ᮤ (i), panolong ᮧ (o, written after), panyuku ᮥ (u), pamepet ᮨ (e) and paneuleung ᮩ (eu), so ka becomes ᮊᮦ ké, ᮊᮤ ki, ᮊᮧ ko, ᮊᮥ ku, ᮊᮨ ke and ᮊᮩ keu. Three add a final consonant: panyecek ᮀ for -ng, panglayar ᮁ for -r and pangwisad ᮂ for -h, as in ᮘᮔ᮪ᮓᮥᮀ Bandung and ᮠᮒᮥᮁ ᮔᮥᮠᮥᮔ᮪ hatur nuhun. Three slip a consonant into a cluster: pamingkal ᮡ (-y-), panyakra ᮢ (-r-) and panyiku ᮣ (-l-). The last, pamaéh ᮪, kills the vowel, so ᮔ᮪ is a bare n. Thirteen signs in all, and words are separated by spaces, as in Latin writing.

Aksara Sunda angka, Old Sundanese letters and bindu marks

Sundanese has its own digits, ᮰ ᮱ ᮲ ᮳ ᮴ ᮵ ᮶ ᮷ ᮸ ᮹ for 0 to 9, written left to right in the same place-value system as ordinary numbers. Because several of them look like letters, a number is set between two vertical bars: |᮲᮰᮲᮶| is 2026 and |᮱᮰| is 10. Spoken, the numbers one to ten are hiji, dua, tilu, opat, lima, genep, tujuh, dalapan, salapan, sapuluh.

Unicode's Sundanese block also covers the older writing. Historic characters include the vocalic letters reu ᮻ and leu ᮼ, archaic i ᮽ (misnamed bha in Unicode), historical final k ᮾ, subjoined ma ᮬ and wa ᮭ, the conjunct-forming virama ᮫ and avagraha ᮺ. The character ᮿ is named final m but reflects a scribal error and should not be used; actual final m is written ᮙ᮪. The eight bindu marks of the Sundanese Supplement block, ᳀ ᳁ ᳂ ᳃ ᳄ ᳅ ᳆ ᳇, are punctuation found in historical materials. The main Sundanese block was added to Unicode in 2008 and these extras in 2012.

How to type Sundanese letters: é and an Aksara Sunda keyboard

Windows: hold Alt and type 0233 on the number pad for é, 0201 for É (the older codes Alt+130 and Alt+144 work too). With the US-International layout type ' then e. Mac: press Option+E, then e (add Shift for É). On Android and iPhone, hold down the e key and slide to é. In HTML write é and É. For eu, ng and ny just type the two letters.

Aksara Sunda is easiest to copy from the grid above. Text typed or pasted in it is real Unicode, but it shows only where a font with the Sundanese block is installed, such as Google's free Noto Sans Sundanese; elsewhere you will see empty boxes. Phone keyboard apps and online converters that turn Latin Sundanese into Aksara Sunda exist; check the result against the rules above, especially the final -ng, -r and -h signs, which a careless converter writes as a consonant plus pamaéh.

Where Sundanese is spoken, its speech levels and its neighbours

Sundanese has about 34 million speakers by CLDR's estimate, nearly all in Indonesia 🇮🇩: in West Java, with its capital Bandung, in Banten, and in Sundanese communities in Jakarta, Lampung and elsewhere. After Javanese, it is the most widely spoken regional language of Indonesia, and almost all its speakers also use Indonesian. Money is written the Indonesian way, Rp25.000 for rupiah, since the rupiah has no symbol of its own in Unicode.

Like Javanese, Sundanese has speech levels (undak-usuk basa): a polite register, basa lemes, for elders and strangers, and a familiar one, basa loma, for friends. To eat is dahar among friends but tuang when speaking politely of someone else. Sundanese is an Austronesian language, a neighbour of Javanese rather than a dialect of it; some linguists group it closer to Malay and Madurese. See also the Javanese, Indonesian, Balinese and Madurese collections, and Indonesia for the country's flag and emoji.