The ability to record thoughts and sounds goes far back in human antiquity, with image making found as early as 30,000 BP (Conard 2003, as cited by Houston, 2004). On The Writing Systems of the World, Coulmas (1989) went as far as saying that writing is the single most important sign system ever invented on Earth. He also argued that it was a crucial advance in human development, that it extended human memory and communicated detailed messages across space and time. And in so doing, it transformed information from fleeting utterances to durable objects and broadened the scope of aesthetics through the invention of calligraphy and new literary genres (Coulmas 1989, pp. 11-14 as cited by Houston, 2004). Conforming to this argument, Houston (2004) describes writing as the most momentous of all communication technologies in the deep past in his paper The Archaelogy of Communication Technologies.
Existing theories on why writing began and for what specific reasons include the technocratic approach which suggests that regardless of region, the first writing appeared for administrative or “utilitarian” reason (Postgate et. al. 1995, p. 478). This approach is best described as the “statist” view of writing because it is usually thought to develop concurrently with the systems of political organizations. A variant of this theory construes that the origins of writing as an attribute of complex polities whose rulers wish to control underling and impress rivals by means of “propaganda” (Marcus 1992 as cited by Houston, 2004). Script was introduced to apportion labor and record tallies of goods or tribute or, in propaganda variant, to justify hereditary inequality.
Another theory is the onomastic model, which relates to the urgent, culturally prescribed need to name things, people or quantities (Stuart 2001 as cited by Houston 2004). A final theory suggests that writing develops not only from state or ceremonial needs, but because certain languages are hospitable to their invention (Boltz 2000, 2001; Daniels 1998 as cited by Houston 2004). Writing has always been a testament to civilization among the great nations (Pangilinan, 2012).
Locally, the Kapampangans have an indigenous writing called Kulitan, which existence is only known to a few.
Contrary to what is taught to average students, that the Philippines history began only with the coming of the European in the early 16th century, the Kapampangan, Butuanon, Tausug, Magindanau, Hiligaynon, Suguanon, Waray, Iloko, Sambal and many other ethnolinguistic groups within the archipelago, already existed as bangsa or nations in their own right. Many of these nations formed their own states and principalities centuries before the Spaniards created the Philippines in the late 16th century. The oldest of these states include Butuan which existed in Chinese records as early as 1001 C.E., Sulu in 1368 C.E. and the Kingdom of Luzon in 1373 C.E. (Zhang, 1617; Scott 1989; Wang 1989; Wade 2005 and Wang 2008 as cited by Pangilinan, 2012)
The Kapampangan nation was once a part of the Kingdom of Luzon. They were on of the Luoes, ‘people of Luzon,’ encountered by Portuguese explorers during their initial ventures into Southeast Asia in the early 16th century (Scott, 1994 as cited by Pangilinan, 2012). The Kapampangan homeland, Indung Kapampangan (Pampanga), became the first province carved out of the Kingdom of Luzon when the Spaniards conquered it in 1571 C.E. (Cavada 1876 and Henson 1965 as cited by Pangilinan, 2012) It was said to be the most populated region in Luzon at that time, with an established agricultural base that can support a huge population (Loarca, 1583; San Agustin 1699; Mallat, 1846; B&R, 1905; Henson, 1965; Larkin, 1972 as cited by Pangilinan, 2012).
If the Kapampangan nation made up the bulk of the population of the Kingdom of Luzon, then perhaps the oldest evidence of Kapampangan writing can be found in the jars exported to Japan prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in 16th century CE ( Pangilinan, 2012). In his book Tokiko or “Investigations of Pottery” published in 1853 C.E., Tauchi Yonesaburo presents several jars marked with the ruson koki ji or the “writing of the Kingdom of Luzon” (Tauchi 1853 and Cole 1912 as cited by Pangilinan, 2012).
With these evidences of the existence of the early version of the Kulitan, one can conjecture that the Kapampangans are a product of a highly developed civilization.
A well-studied topic in linguistics is the obsolescence and extinction of languages around the world. In recent years, this process of decline and death has accelerated rapidly (Houston, 2004).
Since the birth of the alphabet in the Near East around 2000 BC, endless writing systems from different languages and cultures have thrived and perished (Pereira, 2014). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language. Because of their pictorial elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were something sacred, so they referred to them as ‘holy writing’. Thus, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hiero ‘holy’ and glypho ‘writing’. In the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs were called medu netjer, ‘the gods’ words’ as it was believed that writing was an invention of the gods Scoville (2005). Unfortunately, the hieroglyphic writing system is one of the classic examples of extinct writing systems.
Pangilinan (2012) argues that the demotion of indigenous scripts and languages to the status of mere regional dialects is rooted to the elevation of Tagalog as the basis for the national language in the 1930s. He added that anything Tagalog has conveniently become equated with anything “national” or “Filipino.” A number of individuals are now pushing for Baybayin to legally become the Pambansang Sulat or “national script” of the Philippines (National Script Act, 2011; Cabuay, 2011). Ultimately, Pangilinan (2012) stated that once the Tagalog script becomes legally the “national script” of the archipelago, all the existing non-Tagalog indigenous scripts of these islands would suffer the same fate as the indigenous non-Tagalog languages. They will be reduced in importance as mere regional variants of Baybayin and eventually forced to be discarded for the sake of standardization and “national” unity. Like any many existing languages in the archipelago, they would soon become endangered and slowly pushed to extinction.
In 2001, the Center for Kapampangan Studies was established through the joint efforts of Batiauan Foundation spearheaded by Marco Nepomoceno and Michael Pangilinan and Holy Angel University represented by Vice President for Student Affairs, Robbie Tantingco, College of Business and Accountancy Dean Arlyn Villanueva and Chief Librarian Nimfa Maniago. The indigenous script became an indispensible part of the center, specially through the efforts of Joel Mallari and Arnel Garcia who kept Kulitan alive in their various publications and creative expressions.
Other efforts to advocate for the Kulitan mentioned in Pangilinan’s (2012) An Introduction to Kulitan:The Indegenous Kapampangan script include John Manuntag’s use of the Kulitan in digital art and advertising, Marlon Jon Castro Maristela’s Batik Kulitan (tattoos written with Kulitan) and creation of the Aguman Sulat Kapampangan through the efforts of Eliver Tanhueco, Mark Ebbol Rosales, John Balatbal and Bruno Tiotuico. Aguman Sulat Kapampangan is one of the most notable proponents of the Kapampangan language and the Kulitan.
Despite these several actions to propagate the indigenous Kapampangan script, the decline in number of people aware of Kulitan, more so the number of people who could read and write in Kulitan continues.
The researchers accept the reality that making the lot of Kapampangans able to write and read Kulitan is an arduous (but not impossible) task. In light of this, the goal of this proposal is to apprise people about the existence of Kulitan by placing Kulitan equivalent of street names around San Fernando Heritage District and make it known to local and foreign tourists that the Kapampangans have an indigenous system writing of their own, a testament of their rich culture and history through the inclusion of the Kulitan equivalent of San Fernando landmarks in their official markers.
The streets and roads see an influx of people -professionals, commoners, motorists, tourists, drivers, students, vendors, the common people, almost all walks of life- pass by them every day. (Arreola, 2016). Exposing the Kulitan by means of placing Kulitan subscripts on street names of San Fernando Heritage district can serve as low-cost low-maintenance long term promotional effort that entails the possibility of sparking a curiosity to people about the script. With the number of people that pass by these streets, to light curiosity even just to 5 persons a day would have an incremental effect to people’s awareness of the script (Rosales, 2016).
In addition, the researchers believe that this proposal could utilize the aesthetic and symbolical properties of the script. Using Kulitan written street subscripts can be an avenue to demonstrate the beauty and sophistication of the script. Moreover, these Kulitan written street names can ignite a sense of belongingness and pride to Kapampangans.
Finally, the inclusion of Kulitan version of the names of landmarks in their markers can serve as a testament of the rich culture of Kapampangans. Arreola (2016) said that this could be a breakthrough in stressing the identity of the Kapampangans and a slight diversion from the existing efforts to preserve the Kapampangan culture in the aspect of food, arts and tradition. Rosales (2016) said that this is a good way of showing foreigners, local tourists and Kapampangans that ours is a culture that came from highly civilized ancestors with a system of writing.
Humankind is defined by language, but civilization is defined by writing (Daniels and Bright, 1996). Whether or not speech is a product of nature or of the human mind has been a hotly debated question since antiquity, but there is a general agreement that writing is an artifact (Coulmas, 1989). Writing made historical records possible, and writing was the basis for the urban societies of the Old World (Daniels and Bright, 1996).
Many linguists believe that human beings are born to speak, a belief strongly supported by the fact that there is no society known which lack speech. Writing on the other hand is absent from many societies, and we do not consider this an abnormality or essential defect. Writing is a cultural achievement rather than a universal property and as such is much less important than speech for our self-understanding. Nonetheless, it is an invention and a very extraordinary one at that which, for all we know, happened only two or three times in the history of mankind. As a matter of fact, its invention created history in a technical sense (Coulmas, 1989).
It has often been said that writing is a very recent achievement which emerged late in cultural and societal history. This is undoubtedly true although ‘recent’ is, of course, a relative notion. It is recent if compared with speech or the upright gait; recent in terms of the emergence of its earliest predecessors 12,000 years ago (Schmandt-Besserat 1978); and more recent still in terms of its almost universal spread in some societies (Oxenham 1980). Yet, despite its comparatively late advent, the invention of writing has had such pervasive effects on the development of civilization that for all of us who have grown up in a literate culture it is extremely difficult to imagine a world without writing. Almost none of the familiar features of modern society would survive this test; there would be no books, no newspapers, no letters, no tax reports, no pay checks, no identity cards, no lecture notes, no street signs, no labels on commercial products, no advertisements, no medical prescriptions, no systematic education, no dictionaries or encyclopedias, no instruction manuals for radios, cars or computers, a very different kind of religion, a very different kind of law and no science in the proper sense of the word; there would be no linguistics either. A non-literate modern society is a contradiction in terms. Even though the dawn of the post-literate era has been proclaimed by scholar such as Ong (1977), writing is, and will be for some time to come, one of the corner-stones of modern life. The entire civilization of the West as well as the East is unthinkable without it Coulmas (2008).
The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago. They developed a writing system whose wedge-shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts in the same geographical area for the next 3000 years. Eventually, all of these diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform (http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html).
It is actually possible to trace the long road of the invention of the Sumerian writing system. For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the clay tokens securely together (to prevent loss, theft, etc), so they started putting multiple clay tokens into a large, hollow clay container which they then sealed up. However, once sealed, the problem of remembering how many tokens were inside the container arose. To solve this problem, the Mesopotamians started impressing pictures of the clay tokens on the surface of the clay container with a stylus. Also, if there were five clay tokens inside, they would impress the picture of the token five times, and so problem of what and how many inside the container was solved (http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html).
Subsequently, the ancient Mesopotamians stopped using clay tokens altogether, and simply impressed the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also added other symbols that were more pictographic in nature, i.e. they resemble the natural object they represent. Moreover, instead of repeating the same picture over and over again to represent multiple objects of the same type, they used different kinds of small marks to "count" the number of objects, thus adding a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols. Examples of this early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE (http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html).
The Egyptian Hieroglyphs is among the old writing system in the world. Unlike its contemporary cuneiform Sumerian, Egyptian Hieroglyph's origin is much more obscure. There is no identifiable precursor. It was once thought that the origin of Egyptian Hieroglyphs are religious and historical, but recent developments could point to an economical impetus for this script as well as push back the time depth of this writing system (http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html).
The Maya hieroglyphic writing is arguably one of the most visually striking writing systems of the world. It is also very complex, with hundreds of unique signs or glyphs in the form of humans, animals, supernaturals, objects, and abstract designs. These signs are either logograms (to express meaning) or syllabograms (to denote sound values), and are used to write words, phrases, and sentences. In fact, the Maya can write anything that they can say (http://www.ancientscripts.com/maya.html).
While we're on the subject of what the Maya could "say", let's talk about Maya languages. The "Maya" in general were actually not a single people but many nations with different, but related, cultures, religions, and languages. Of the many Maya languages, only two (possibly three) were written down with the hieroglyphic system. It is thought that speakers of the Ch'olan language, and possibly also those of the Tzeltalan language, were the inventors of the Maya writing system. Another group, the speakers of Yucatec, adopted the script to write their own language. However, in some places, both languages were represented on hieroglyphic inscriptions, which not only stumped archaeologists for many years but also offered tantalizing clues into how Maya languages have interacted (http://www.ancientscripts.com/maya.html).
Many languages have disappeared, notably in the last 100 years, and many more are in grave danger of doing so (Crystal 2000:14–15; Sasse 1992:7). Script obsolescence is far rarer, primarily because languages vastly outnumber writing systems. Today, some 6,000 or more languages exist (Dixon 1997:143), whereas not many more than 100 scripts are attested (depending on how they are lumped and divided: Gaur 1992:216–26; Campbell 1997:vii). Nonetheless, it is possible that scripts were invented with some frequency, but without the means to transmit them down generations or develop them from temporary expedients into sustained traditions (John Monaghan, personal communication, 1999). David Crystal (2000:15) asserts that if it is to survive in the modern world a spoken language requires in excess of 20,000 speakers. In cases such as isolated languages in insular settings, this number is clearly too large (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
Writing is not language. It is a graphic conveyance of meaning and sound, and has a communicative and existential role, being artifact as much as message. The key difference is that language resides, according to recent reports, in the human genome, an assertion that cannot be made for writing. People can learn a new language but, unless in some way impaired, they do not stop talking. This ability is essential to social life; its use is non-optional. For this reason, the use of “death” in describing the extinction of script is evocative but misleading. We prefer “obsolescence” for the reason that it means simply to “go out of use” and does not employ a biological metaphor (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
As with language, the context of script obsolescence may be abrupt and radical, involving the extermination of the scribes or vigorous repression of their craft, or it may experience “gradual death” as competence recedes toward desultory, defective use (Campbell and Muntzel 1989:182–86). The process of “tip” from one precarious state to another relates to the “ecology” of the script, that is, to its position in relation to its society and culture and to other scripts (Haugen 1971:25). The system of valuations in which scripts are embedded is crucial—which are prestigious, which are not, which serve general functions, which serve a more specialized purpose. Such aspects of the setting may also explain why certain scripts hold on against potent, disabling forces. Gradual obsolescence may involve a shift to a dominant script while retaining a niche in which an older script persists (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
The preservation of languages concerns highly emotive issues of cultural diversity and ethnic identity (Dorian 1998:5; Garzon et al. 1998:169–70; Crystal 2000:66–67). The same is true of scripts (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
The loss of writing relates to its function and social role, both positively and negatively. In a positive sense, the presence of writing can make an artifact or a building functional, whether or not whoever benefits can read what is written. In a negative sense, if writing’s cultural or practical functions lose their role and value, or are superseded by other scripts or practices, any particular form of writing will almost inevitably disappear (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
Houston, Baines and Cooper (2003) did a comparison of three important script traditions—Egyptian, cuneiform, and Mayan in its Mesoamerican setting—highlights similarities and differences in their patterns of obsolescence in their work Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica. All involved, to some extent, sociolinguistic, “spheres-of-exchange,” and demographic assaults. All experienced a dramatic reduction in function and, perhaps, content: the latest datable cuneiform text pertains to astronomy; Egyptian hieroglyphic became “celebratory” and temple-oriented, demotic equally tethered to the values of a civilization neglected and latterly under cultural assault; and Mayan glyphs, wholly unlike the “open” pictography of Mexico, became highly restricted in function and use, with a near-total attenuation of public functions (Houston, Baines and Cooper, 2003).
Kulitan or Súlat Kapampángan, the indigenous Kapampangan script, is an abugida or alphasyllabary, where the consonantal characters possess a default vowel sound that can be altered with use of diacritical marks. Kulitan, like other scripts in Southeast Asia, is an Indian-inspired script (Pangilinan, 2012).
Fray Alvaro de Banavante (1699) and Fray Diego Bergano (1732) wrote in their Arte and Vocabulario that the Kapampangan nation referred to the character in their indigenous scripts as culit. Utilizing his proposed indigenized Latin orthography that replaces C and Q with the letter K, Don Zoilo Hilario (1962) naturally wrote culit as kulit in referring to the same characters. The whole writing system is therefore logically termed Kulitan according to Siuala ding Meangubie, Edwin Camaya and Marco Nepomoceno of the Batiuanan Foundation. The average Kapampangan however simply called the indigenous writing systemas Sulat Kapampangan in contrast to the Latin and other scripts (Pangilinan, 2012).
The script is written from top to bottom in columns running from right to left. Pangilinan (2012) said that manner of writing is a homage to the movements of the sun. The rays of the sun spreads down to earth from the heavens, hence top to bottom. When facing the North Star or Talang Ugut, Bunduk Alaya on the East sits on your right hand while Bunduk Pinatubu on the West sits on your left, thus explaining the writing direction from left to right (Pangilinan, 2012).
Kulitan is basically made up of Indûng Súlat or the “mother” characters and the Anak Súlat or the “offspring” characters. The Indûng Súlat are the base characters with the unaltered inherent vowel sounds. They are the building blocks of Súlat Kapampángan. Indûng súlat gives birth to Anak Súlat or “offspring” characters whenever their inherent vowel sound has been altered by a ligature or a diacritical mark (Pangilinan, 2012).
The siuálâ or vowels in Kulitan are usually written as garlit (Hilario, 1962) or diacritical marks placed above or below an individual Indûng Súlat or “mother” character. Ligatures are also sometimes used to further lengthen these vowel sounds or represent the monophthongized diphthongs AI (E) and AU (O). A glyph with a diacritical mark or ligature attached to it is an Anak Súlat or “offspring” character. The recital order of the Indûng Súlat or the basic mother characters are A, I, U, E, O, GA, KA, NGA, TA, DA, NA, LA, SA, MA, PA, BA (Pangilinan, 2012).