Baca

Paste or type Lontara. Get the set of plausible Latin readings as a tree — not one confident guess.

Lontara

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Lontara keyboard

A vowel sign modifies the last letter. The inherent vowel /a/ has no sign.

A worked example. Type above to replace it.

Syllable skeleton

pamula

The inherent vowel /a/ throughout, no finals, no gemination, no glottal stop. This is what the script actually states — not a chosen reading.

Reading tree

3 possible readings

The readings below are corpus-attested only: the form does occur in Bugis Wikipedia text, but that does not make it a Bugis word. The same corpus contains Indonesian, English and foreign place names, and this tool cannot tell them apart. No dictionary has been used yet.

pa3 possible readings
gemination A geminate is written as a single letter. The doubling is not recoverable from the writing. Aksara tidak menentukan pilihan di sini, jadi 2 kemungkinan dibiarkan terbuka.
- mmugemination
  - la2 possible readings
    final consonant A syllable-final consonant is dropped, and the loss is declared at that span. Aksara tidak menentukan pilihan di sini, jadi 2 kemungkinan dibiarkan terbuka.
    - ∅
      corpus
      score 2
      What this ranking rests on
      band unknown · 1
      Terdaftar dalam leksikon pada band frekuensi "unknown".
      keterbuktian corpus · 2
      Hanya muncul dalam korpus. Itu berarti bentuknya ada di teks, bukan bahwa ia kata Bugis — korpusnya memuat juga bahasa Indonesia, Inggris, dan nama tempat asing.
      pemulihan tak tertulis · -1
      Bacaan ini memulihkan 1 hal yang tidak dituliskan aksara (gemination).
      Source
      Bugis Wikipedia (bug.wikipedia.org), pages-articles dump · 2 article(s), e.g. Neymar; Pinisi · CC BY-SA 4.0
    - ngfinal consonant
      corpus
      score 1
      What this ranking rests on
      band unknown · 1
      Terdaftar dalam leksikon pada band frekuensi "unknown".
      keterbuktian corpus · 2
      Hanya muncul dalam korpus. Itu berarti bentuknya ada di teks, bukan bahwa ia kata Bugis — korpusnya memuat juga bahasa Indonesia, Inggris, dan nama tempat asing.
      pemulihan tak tertulis · -2
      Bacaan ini memulihkan 2 hal yang tidak dituliskan aksara (gemination, final).
      Source
      Bugis Wikipedia (bug.wikipedia.org), pages-articles dump · 5 article(s), e.g. Abu Bakar Ash-Shiddiq; Allake-lakenna Addatuangngé ri Sawitto; Indonésiya · CC BY-SA 4.0
- mu
  - la
    - ∅
      corpus
      score 3
      What this ranking rests on
      band unknown · 1
      Terdaftar dalam leksikon pada band frekuensi "unknown".
      keterbuktian corpus · 2
      Hanya muncul dalam korpus. Itu berarti bentuknya ada di teks, bukan bahwa ia kata Bugis — korpusnya memuat juga bahasa Indonesia, Inggris, dan nama tempat asing.
      Source
      Bugis Wikipedia (bug.wikipedia.org), pages-articles dump · 4 article(s), e.g. 30 Seconds to Mars; Enon; The Doors · CC BY-SA 4.0

There is no “known words only” switch here: enumeration is lexicon-driven, so every reading shown is already a known word. An unfiltered set would need structural enumeration, which is blocked on openQuestions.final-inventory.

Not determined by the script

final consonantA syllable-final consonant is not written.
geminationSingle and doubled consonants are written alike.
prenasalisationA 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 stopThe glottal stop — the apostrophe in Lontara' — is not written.

Penyebutan bacaan di sini digerakkan oleh leksikon: satu bacaan adalah lema yang, bila dituliskan ke Lontara, menghasilkan rangkaian ini. Jadi kelengkapannya bersifat relatif terhadap leksikon, bukan mutlak. Keempat kelas tetap tidak ditentukan oleh aksara, dan bacaan sah yang belum masuk leksikon tidak akan muncul di sini.

Reading tree — Not determined by the script

gemination×1

Single and doubled consonants are written alike.

mmu | mu
A geminate is written as a single letter. The doubling is not recoverable from the writing. Aksara tidak menentukan pilihan di sini, jadi 2 kemungkinan dibiarkan terbuka.
Rule lontara.gemination.collapse · Input “ᨆᨘ” · Not determined by the script
Citation Derived from inventory.json block.hasVirama = false and PRD §2 (`mata` / `matta` / `manta` are written identically). A syllable-final consonant identical to the onset of the syllable that follows it is a geminate; with no virama there is no way to write it, so it collapses into the single following letter.

final consonant×1

A syllable-final consonant is not written.

∅ | ng
A syllable-final consonant is dropped, and the loss is declared at that span. Aksara tidak menentukan pilihan di sini, jadi 2 kemungkinan dibiarkan terbuka.
Rule lontara.final.drop · Input “∅” · Not determined by the script
Citation Derived from inventory.json block.hasVirama = false and PRD §2. There is no mechanism in the encoding for a bare consonant, so any consonant that closes a syllable is not written.

Forms attested in the corpus

These forms genuinely occur in Bugis Wikipedia, written in both Lontara and Latin by its editors. Press one to read it here.

What a pair claims is only this: a Wikipedia editor wrote this aksara and this Latin for each other. That is community practice, not authority — no reviewer has signed any of it off, and some pairs are plainly wrong.

This repository's rules produce different aksara from what the corpus records. Either the rules are wrong or practice varies. Shown as it is, rather than hidden.

These rules agree with 91 of 97 attested pairs.

Bugis Wikipedia (bug.wikipedia.org), pages-articles dump · 20260701 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bugis Wikipedia contributors. Each pair records the articles it was taken from.

Codepoint view

U+1A04BUGINESE LETTER PA
U+1A06BUGINESE LETTER MA
U+1A18BUGINESE VOWEL SIGN U
U+1A12BUGINESE LETTER LA

Always available. If the aksara fails to render on your device, these codepoints still carry the answer.

Rule trace

lontara.syllable.composecitedread
BUGINESE LETTER PA → "pa"
Input
[0,1) “ᨄ”
Output
[0,2) “pa”
Citation Unicode code chart U1A00.pdf, block Buginese. Each consonant letter U+1A00..U+1A16 carries the inherent vowel /a/; a vowel sign U+1A17..U+1A1B replaces it. The Latin value of each letter and sign is its Unicode character name.
lontara.syllable.composecitedread
BUGINESE LETTER MA + BUGINESE VOWEL SIGN U → "mu"
Input
[1,2) “ᨆᨘ”
Output
[2,4) “mu”
Citation Unicode code chart U1A00.pdf, block Buginese. Each consonant letter U+1A00..U+1A16 carries the inherent vowel /a/; a vowel sign U+1A17..U+1A1B replaces it. The Latin value of each letter and sign is its Unicode character name.
lontara.syllable.composecitedread
BUGINESE LETTER LA → "la"
Input
[2,3) “ᨒ”
Output
[4,6) “la”
Citation Unicode code chart U1A00.pdf, block Buginese. Each consonant letter U+1A00..U+1A16 carries the inherent vowel /a/; a vowel sign U+1A17..U+1A1B replaces it. The Latin value of each letter and sign is its Unicode character name.