Lontara Alphabet Table
| Letter | Name | Romanized | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᨀ | KA | ka | k + inherent a |
| ᨁ | GA | ga | g + a |
| ᨂ | NGA | nga | ng + a |
| ᨃ | NGKA | ngka | ng + ka as ONE letter |
| ᨄ | PA | pa | p + a |
| ᨅ | BA | ba | b + a |
| ᨆ | MA | ma | m + a |
| ᨇ | MPA | mpa | m + pa as ONE letter |
| ᨈ | TA | ta | t + a |
| ᨉ | DA | da | d + a |
| ᨊ | NA | na | n + a |
| ᨋ | NRA | nra | n + ra as ONE letter |
| ᨌ | CA | ca | c + a |
| ᨍ | JA | ja | j + a |
| ᨎ | NYA | nya | ny + a |
| ᨏ | NYCA | nyca | ny + ca as ONE letter |
| ᨐ | YA | ya | y + a |
| ᨑ | RA | ra | r + a |
| ᨒ | LA | la | l + a |
| ᨓ | VA | va | v + a |
| ᨔ | SA | sa | s + a |
| ᨕ | A | a | independent vowel a |
| ᨖ | HA | ha | h + a |
Lontara is the script of South Sulawesi - the abugida of the Buginese, Makassarese and Mandar languages of Indonesia - named for the <b>lontar palm</b> whose leaves served as its paper for centuries. Each of its 23 letters is a syllable with a built-in <i>a</i>: <i>ka</i> is just k+a, and a vowel sign changes it. Four of those letters are the chart’s party trick - <i>ngka, mpa, nra, nyca</i> - pre-composed nasal clusters that Latin needs two or three characters to spell, each one single Lontara letter. Writing runs left to right and, traditionally, without word breaks at all.
The script’s most famous habit is what it leaves out: classical Buginese writing skips the vowel signs entirely, so the page is a bare consonant skeleton and the reader supplies vowels from context - a system locals associate with the court chronicles and with the epic <i>I La Galigo</i>, whose palm-leaf and paper manuscripts survive in museums from Makassar to Leiden. Lontara never stopped being written: in Bugis areas it now appears mainly at ceremonies such as weddings, while in Makassar it still carries personal documents and correspondence, and printing keeps traditional Buginese literature in circulation.
How to use
- Read the 23 rows as the script’s inventory: twenty-one consonant-plus-a syllables, one independent vowel letter <i>a</i>, and <i>ha</i> closing the set. The four nasal-cluster letters - <i>ngka, mpa, nra, nyca</i> - are where Lontara compresses what English spells with two or three graphemes into one sign; everything else behaves like its Philippine cousins (<a href="https://tooldune.com/baybayin-alphabet-table/">Baybayin</a>, <a href="https://tooldune.com/hanunoo-alphabet-table/">Hanunóo</a>): consonant letter = consonant + a, five vowel signs (i, u, e, o, ae) switch the vowel when a writer chooses to mark them.
- To write the traditional way, spell the consonants and stop - no vowel signs, no spaces between words, and let the reader’s ear fill in the rest; that is how most historical lontara manuscripts read. The modern way adds the vowel signs from the block (U+1A17 to U+1A1B) where spelling matters - names, prices, places. The two punctuation marks are worth knowing on sight: <i>pallawa</i> (U+1A1E), the verse-and-paragraph divider you will see constantly in printed literature, and the end-of-section mark (U+1A1F) that closes a passage.
Frequently asked questions
What does the name Lontara mean?
It comes from the lontar (palmyra) palm whose large leaves were the classic writing surface of South Sulawesi: dried, smoothed and incised with a knife, then bound between wooden covers. The script’s Buginese name for itself is <i>urupu sulapa eppa</i> - the square letters - after the four-sided cosmology of Bugis-Makassar art, but the palm-leaf name is the one the world kept, and the manuscripts that survive in collections are overwhelmingly palm leaf and, later, paper.
Is Lontara still used today?
Yes, though its jobs have narrowed. In Bugis parts of South Sulawesi its use is largely ceremonial - wedding invitations and rituals are the classic modern appearances - while Makassarese writers also keep it for personal documents and letters, and printers continue to set traditional Buginese literature in it. Signage and logos borrow it for local identity, and school and heritage programs teach it, but day-to-day prose has moved to the Latin alphabet. It is a living script of ceremony and correspondence rather than of newspaper headlines.
Why are vowels usually not written?
Because the classical convention treats the consonant skeleton as enough: a Buginese reader reconstructs the vowels from context the way an English reader expands an abbreviation - quickly, and mostly without error in familiar formulas, songs and chronicles. The vowel signs exist (five of them, i, u, e, o and ae) and are used today whenever precision matters, but manuscripts prized for style often omit them entirely, which is why the same string can be read with different vowels in different songs. Outsiders find this the hardest habit; the chart’s romanized column shows what each bare letter already says.
What are the pre-composed nasal letters?
Four letters fuse a nasal and the following stop into one sign: <i>ngka</i>, <i>mpa</i>, <i>nra</i> and <i>nyca</i>. They exist because those clusters behave as single sounds in Buginese and Makassarese phonology, so the script gives them single letters - a compression Latin never needed. In Unicode they are ordinary letters in the sequence (U+1A03, U+1A07, U+1A0B and U+1A0F), which is why this chart lists 23 letters where a naive count of the alphabet’s history might expect 19.
How is Lontara related to the Philippine scripts?
As a cousin twice over. Both families descend from Indic Brahmi via Kawi trade routes, and both are abugidas: consonant letters carry a built-in <i>a</i>, and diacritics switch the vowel. The differences are climate and economy - Lontara keeps five vowel signs and those four nasal-cluster letters, while <a href="https://tooldune.com/baybayin-alphabet-table/">Baybayin</a> and <a href="https://tooldune.com/hanunoo-alphabet-table/">Hanunóo</a> make do with three vowels and a dot. For the same story on other continents, see the <a href="https://tooldune.com/tifinagh-alphabet-table/">Tifinagh</a> and <a href="https://tooldune.com/nko-alphabet-table/">N’Ko</a> charts.