Layer 1 — Modern Filipino Alphabet (28 letters)
- 26 basic Latin letters (A–Z)
- Plus Ñ (enye)
- Plus Ng (digraph as a single phoneme)
Modern Filipino Alphabet in LGM format:
- A → a
- B → b
- C → c
- D → d
- E → e
- F → f
- G → g
- H → h
- I → i
- J → j
- K → k
- L → l
- M → m
- N → n
- Ñ → n + y (palatal nasal [ɲ])
- Ng → n + g (velar nasal [ŋ])
- O → o
- P → p
- Q → q
- R → r
- S → s
- T → t
- U → u
- V → v
- W → w
- X → x
- Y → y
- Z → z
Layer 2 — Baybayin Core Syllabary (Precolonial Grapheme Set)
Baybayin consisted of consonant symbols with an inherent “a” vowel, modified by marks for “e/i” and “o/u”, plus standalone vowel symbols.
Base vowels:
- ᜀ → a
- ᜁ → i / e
- ᜂ → u / o
Base consonants (with inherent “a” vowel):
- ᜃ → ka
- ᜄ → ga
- ᜅ → nga
- ᜆ → ta
- ᜇ → da / ra
- ᜈ → na
- ᜉ → pa
- ᜊ → ba
- ᜋ → ma
- ᜌ → ya
- ᜎ → la
- ᜏ → wa
- ᜐ → sa
- ᜑ → ha
Diacritics (kudlit):
- Mark above consonant → changes inherent “a” to “e/i”
- Mark below consonant → changes inherent “a” to “o/u”
- Virama (cross-shaped mark) → cancels the inherent vowel entirely
Why both layers matter
- Modern Filipino gives full interoperability with our Latin-script lattice and STT pipeline.
- Baybayin ties the system into the same grapheme–morpheme architecture as Arabic script, Devanagari, kana, and others.
- This means any Filipino word can be expressed either:
- In modern letters (phonetic spelling)
- In Baybayin graphemes (historical/heritage form)
- Or in universal grapheme code (our master system)