On a recent trip to Bangkok, I was surprised that my Grab driver was a woman. She shared that it was safe in the city to have strangers in her backseat all day. Fluent in English from her time in the hotel industry, she was also an avid golfer who had competed in tournaments in the Philippines.

As someone interested in indigenous scripts, I couldn’t resist asking her about Thai writing, which you see everywhere in Thailand (and why not?). She explained that it’s difficult for foreigners to learn because it’s so different from the Latin script. For one, Thai words don’t have spaces between them, making a whole sentence appear like one long word to beginners. There are also dozens of vowel forms. 

Before I got out of her car, amid traffic that reminded me of home, she wrote my name in Thai. So cool!

In return, I wrote her name — anglicized as Kate — in Baybayin. She smiled at it for a moment, whispered that it looked beautiful, and promptly stuck it on the back of her phone. I had written it on an adhesive Post-it, a handy item I always carry.

The wonder and joy people express when they see their name in Baybayin for the first time is a common reaction. It’s like discovering a part of yourself you never knew existed. 

For years, I’ve written names in Baybayin as a way to break the ice, offer a keepsake, and spark conversation. Above all, I want people to know that it’s not just a decorative relic — it’s a living, usable script that’s part of our heritage.

Unlike other Asian nations, the Philippines doesn’t teach its native scripts in schools (the reasons for this would need another essay). Countries like Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, and Korea ensure their students are proficient in both their native writing systems and the Latin alphabet. Filipino students, on the other hand, are typically taught only the Latin script. Other cultures have proven that it’s possible to be fluent in two or more scripts, much as Filipinos are often multilingual in spoken languages. 

So why should we learn Baybayin if we’ve long used the Latin script? The simple answer: because it’s ours. Just as we conserve endemic trees and protect the West Philippine Sea, we should preserve what’s uniquely ours.

Baybayin has been part of our heritage long before colonization. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they found that Filipinos were already literate. Antonio Morga, a Spanish lawyer and colonial official, wrote in 1609 that “all the natives, women as well as men, write in this language, and there are very few who do not write well and correctly.”

The oldest known Philippine writing specimen, the Laguna Copperplate, dates back to 900 A.D. and is a legal document condoning a debt. Now housed in the National Museum, it’s evidence of a literate society with advanced legal and political structures. I’ve often wondered why our top law schools don’t display a replica of the Laguna Copperplate to highlight the Philippines' pre-colonial legal traditions. After all, the rule of law didn’t arrive with the Europeans.

The irony is that, while the Philippine government hasn’t made Baybayin a mandatory subject, it appears in many public places — from police stations to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (whose logo features three Baybayin symbols representing the letter Ka). This same character is emblazoned on Philippine military uniforms to signify the armed forces' origins in the Katipunan.

Baybayin also appears on our money and passports. If an immigration officer abroad asks a Filipino traveler about the Baybayin on their passport, they better be ready with an answer (message me, and I’ll tell you).

Of course, we also see Baybayin on tattoos, clothing, and other merchandise.

That’s a lot of exposure for a native script most Filipinos can neither read nor write.

This tokenistic, superficial use of Baybayin coincides with its neglect as a functional communication tool. The script hasn’t evolved the way other writing systems have, to adapt to modern needs. It’s essentially unchanged since the Spanish era, with no standard guidelines for usage and some obvious deficiencies. There’s only one character for both Da and Ra, for example, and only one for both O and U. 

Ian Alfonso, a historian and professor at UP Diliman, has written about the need for Baybayin standardization to ensure it can be used more widely. A cultural agency could convene experts to address the script's issues and establish a more unified system.

Even the Baybayin on the UP sablay (graduation sash) is contentious. It literally reads “U-Pa,” but according to an unwritten Baybayin rule where spelling is based on pronunciation, UP should be written differently. There is still no standard for spelling abbreviations in Baybayin.

This is an issue that Baybayin experts could resolve. Until then, users might interpret the letters as “rent” rather than “U.P.”