Baybayin, the Syllabic Alphabet of the Tagalogs

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When the Spaniards conquered the Philippines (Cebu 1565, Manila 1571), they noticed several of its nations had a writing system of their own, called Baybayin in Tagalog. It was a king of short-hand that did not make it possible to record closing consonants; thus i-lu in Baybayin could represent i-log "river", i-long "nose" or it-log "egg", so much so that, while easy to write, it was difficult to read. Because of this shortcoming, it gave way to the Latin alphabet in the course of the 17th century. Nowadays Filipino graphic artists are reviving Baybayin to express their philippineness.