Lontara script · Basa Ugi
One spelling, many readings.
A Lontara reading and writing explainer for Basa Ugi. The script does not write final consonants, geminates, prenasalisation or the glottal stop — this tool enumerates what it leaves undetermined.
- mata: nothing lost
- matta: t — gemination
- manta: n — final consonant
- Written
- Latin → Lontara: deterministic, but lossy. The discarded information is predictable and enumerable.
- Read
- Lontara → Latin: one-to-many. A string has many valid readings; choosing requires lexical and contextual knowledge.
Lontara is a defective script
The Unicode Buginese block (U+1A00–U+1A1F) contains 23 consonant letters, five vowel signs, and two punctuation marks — and no virama. There is no mechanism in the encoding for a bare consonant. Consequently the orthography does not write these four things:
final consonant
A syllable-final consonant is not written.
gemination
Single and doubled consonants are written alike.
prenasalisation
A nasal before a stop — the n or m in a cluster like mp, ngk, nr, nyc. Those four have letters of their own; any other nasal+stop cluster does not, and the nasal goes unwritten. How far that reaches is unanswered — see the Ejaan page.
glottal stop
The glottal stop — the apostrophe in Lontara' — is not written.