Tausug Alphabet & Letters

Tausug, which its speakers call Bahasa Sug, is written today in the Latin alphabet; long vowels are marked with macrons (ā, ī, ū). In the commonly described three-vowel system, native words use a, i and u as vowel phonemes and the consonants b, d, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w and y. The sound at the end of English 'sing' is written ng, two ordinary letters, as in Bangsa Sug, the Tausug nation; the Ñ of the Filipino alphabet turns up only in Spanish names.

In the commonly described three-vowel variety, e and o are rare outside names and loanwords, and borrowed words are often respelled the Tausug way, with i and u. C, F, Q, V, X and Z turn up the same way, mostly in personal names, place names and English terms. So macron vowels (ā, ī, ū), the peso sign ₱ and, for religious and heritage writing, Arabic letters are among the characters a Tausug writer may need beyond a normal keyboard.

The glottal stop and Tausug punctuation

Tausug has a glottal stop, the catch in the throat between the two vowels of English 'uh-oh', and it can change the meaning of a word. In the dictionary orthography, a glottal stop between two vowels is left unwritten (the vowels are simply written side by side), while elsewhere, for instance at the end of a word as in kura' 'horse', it is written with an apostrophe; many everyday writers leave it out.

Otherwise punctuation follows English and Filipino use: full stops, commas, question marks and quotation marks written “like this”. Prices are written in Philippine pesos with the peso sign, ₱250, or as PHP or P in plain text; in Sabah, Malaysia, Tausug speakers write the Malaysian ringgit with the symbol RM.

Sulat Sug: Tausug in Arabic script

Long before the Latin alphabet, Tausug was written in an Arabic-based script known as Sulat Sug (Sulu writing) or Jawi, of the same family as the Jawi script used for Malay. Letters and records of the Sulu Sultanate were written in it, alongside Malay and Arabic, and religious texts in Tausug were written in it too.

Children in Sulu learn the Arabic letters at the madrasah to read the Qur'an, so ا ب ت and the rest are familiar to many Tausug readers even when they write their language in Latin letters. Sulat Sug uses a Malay/Sulu character for /ŋ/, while traditional Sulu spelling uses Arabic feh for both /p/ and /f/, unlike Malay Jawi’s dotted pe; the 28 base letters are in the grid above, and the Arabic and Malay (Arabic script) collections cover the script in full.

How to type Tausug letters, the apostrophe and ₱

Long vowels may be written with macrons (ā, ī, ū), which are not on a standard keyboard; the peso sign is another character worth a shortcut. On Windows, the curly apostrophe ’ is Alt+0146 on the number pad; in Word, type 20B1 and press Alt+X to turn it into ₱. On a Mac, ’ is Option+Shift+] and ₱ is in the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space, search 'peso').

On phones, ₱ is among the currency signs on the symbols page of most keyboards. For Sulat Sug, add the Arabic keyboard on your phone or computer. In HTML, write ₱ for ₱ and ’ for ’.

Where the Tausug language is spoken

Tausug is the language of the Sulu archipelago in the southern Philippines 🇵🇭, centred on Jolo island, and is also spoken in Zamboanga City, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and southern Palawan. CLDR estimates about 1.3 million speakers in the Philippines; across the sea in Sabah, Malaysia 🇲🇾, the Tausug are known as the Suluk. For centuries it was the language of the Sulu Sultanate and of trade across the islands, and it is widely used as a second language by other groups of the archipelago.

Tausug is commonly glossed as 'people of the current': tau means person and sug is often glossed as 'current', though another explanation takes Suug as the old name of Jolo. Though spoken by Muslim communities far to the south, Tausug is a Bisayan language, related to Cebuano and Hiligaynon and closest to Surigaonon and Butuanon of northeastern Mindanao. Its Mindanao neighbours Maguindanaon and Maranao belong to a different branch, and Filipino is the national language most Tausug also speak.