Cecarakan

Cecarakan script is an alternative script for Indonesian and Malay invented by Ali Aulia Ghozali in 2004. The name is derived from Balinese alphabet, Carakan and many of the letters are derived from South East Asian scripts, especially Javanese, Balinese and Thai.

Notable features

Type of writing system: abugida
Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines
Used to write: Malay and Indonesian
Number of letters: 36 main letters, 8 vowel modifiers, 7 diacritics, and 6 punctiation marks

Main letters

There are 36 main letters. All of the letters have an inherent vowel /a/ except the glottal stop. Most of those letters, except the glottal stop and clusters, have sandangan forms. Sandangan forms cancel the vowel of the preceding letter.

Cecarakan main letters

Note: /ø/ is unvoiced when modified by a vowel modifier.

Sandangan forms

Cecarakan sandangan forms

Note: the grey area indicate main letters that have no sandangan.

The order of the alphabet is: Ba Mba Pa Mpa Ma Wa Va Fa Da Nda Ta Nta Na Sa Za La Ra Le Re Ja Nja Ca Nca Nya Ya Sya Ya Ga Ngga Ka Ngka Nga Ksa Kha Ha A.

Vowel modifiers

Vowel modifiers change the inherent vowel /a/ into other vowels. Those modifier vowels are sometimes combined with another vowel modifier to produce a distinct phoneme.

Cecarakan vowel modifiers

Note: penolong is pronounced /o/ if preceded by peneleng.

Pengai can be combined with penyuku and penolong to produce the diphthongs au /aʷ/ and oi /oʲ/. Words containing the sound -er- or -el- followed by a vowel (a, i, u, e, o) are written in this way. The same pattern is also used with the -el- sound.

Examples of have to write -er-

Pengai is also used to write two vowels that appear together.

Examples of have to write two vowels togethers

Diacritics

Cecarakan diacritics

Punctuation marks

Cecarakan shares the same punctuation with Latin script, including the question mark (?), exclamation mark (!), single quote ('), and double quote ("), plus some native punctuation marks.

Cecarakan punctuation

Numerals

All numerals are written with empat batu to show they are being used as numerals, as they all have other functions.

Cecarakan numerals

Native numbers are used texts with no mathematical symbols. Arabic numbers are used with mathematical symbols.

Sample text in Cecarakan

Transliteraiton

Semua orang dilahirkan merdeka dan mempunyai martabat dan hak-hak yang sama. Mereka dikaruniai akal dan hati nurani dan hendaknya bergaul satu sama lain dalam semangat persaudaraan.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Indonesian)

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

If you want to know more about Cecarakan, please contact Ali Aulia Ghozali (qchienk_miaw@yahoo.co.id).

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