CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- A Kapampangan group is doing what schools and other institutions have failed to do in advancing the cause of the Kapampangan language -- stepping up efforts to propagate the ancient Kapampangan writing script "Kulitan."
Jayvie Aybome, one of the organizers, said they are now conducting school training sessions to teach younger Kapampangans about their native script and at the same time encourage the use of the Kapampangan language.
The move is expected to draw attention to the language and almost forgotten script, while there are some two million Kapampangans, not even one percent of the total number of native speakers writes in the native Kulitan script.
Aybome believes that learning the native script runs parallel to promoting the language and can, in fact, boost interest in the language.
Kulitan is one of various indigenous writing systems in the Philippines. It is used for writing the Kapampangan language spoken in the provinces of Pampanga, Tarlac, Bataan and Nueva Ecija.
Kulitan is an abugida or alphasyllabary writing system, 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. Aybome, for one, was self taught in the Kulitan script and later advanced further through the help of Kulitan experts.
Aybome joined the Aguman Sulat Kapampangan largely initiated by Mike Pangilinan, the author of the first ever guidebook on the native script. Not wanting to keep the knowledge to themselves, they put up the Facebook page “Kulitan."
Most of the best Kulitan script writers today are mostly teenagers who also serve as teachers to people wanting to learn the script. Foremost expert on the Kapampangan script, Pangilinan is chief among the group in drumming up support for the initiative of urging younger Kapampangans to write in the script.
Pangilinan held the first Kulitan lecture at the Pasig National High School in Candaba town in 2012. Today, they are set to host similar lectures at the Christ In You Faith Christian Academy here and Apalit National High School on September 27 and October 11, respectively.
“One of the objectives of our organization is the continuous study, reviving and its propagation. The Kulitan script needs to be taught or at least be exposed and be familiar to the Kapampangans because along with the existing writing systems in the Philippines, the Tagalog Baybayin is overshadowing them. Our fellow Kapampangans must know that our ancestors were able create a writing system that goes with our language,” Aybome said.