Status: Individual Contribution Action: For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC

Abstract

The Sundanese script, or aksara Sunda, is used for writing the Sundanese language, one of the languages of the island of Java in Indonesia. It is a descendent of the ancient Brahmi script of India, and so has many similarities with modern scripts of South Asia and Southeast Asia which are also members of that family. The script has official support and is taught in schools and is used on road signs. The SIL Ethnologue indicates that there are 27,000,000 Sundanese. Sundanese has been written in a number of scripts. Pallawa or Pra-Nagari was first used in West Java to write Sanskrit from the fifth to eighth centuries CE, and from Pallawa was derived Sunda Kuna or Old Sundanese which was used in the Sunda Kingdom from the 14th to 18th centuries. Both Javanese and Arabic script were used from the 17th to 19th centuries and the 17th to the mid-20th centuries respectively. Latin script has had currency since the 20th century. The modern Sundanese script, called Sunda Baku or Official Sundanese, was made official in 1996. The modern script itself was derived from Old Sundanese, the earliest example of which is the Prasasti Kawali stone (see Figure 1). Structure Consonants bear the inherent vowel, which vowel matras may modify. The explicit PAMAAEH or virama is used where there is no inherent vowel; this does not cause Brahmic consonant clustering. Initial