Pegon script اَكسارا ڤَيڮَون‎
Babad Diponegoro written in Pegon (manuscript at National Library of Indonesia)
Script type	Abjad
Time period	c. 1300 CE to the present
Direction	Right-to-left
Languages	Javanese Sundanese Madurese Indonesian[1][2]
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic Pegon script
Sister systems	Jawi script Buri Wolio Sorabe alphabet

Pegon consonants. Letters not present in the Arabic alphabet are marked with a yellow square.

Pegon vowels

Pegon (Javanese and Sundanese: اَكسارا ڤَيڮَون‎, Aksara Pégon; also known as اَبجَد ڤَيڮَون‎, Abjad Pégon, Madurese: أبجاْد ڤَيگو, Abjâd Pèghu)^[3] is a modified Arabic script used to write the Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese languages, as an alternative to the Latin script or the Javanese script^[4] and the Old Sundanese script.^[5] It was used in a variety of applications, from religion, to diplomacy, to poetry.^[6][7][8] But today particularly, it is used for religious (Islamic) writing and poetry, particularly in writing commentaries of the Qur'an. Pegon includes letters that are not present in Modern Standard Arabic. Pegon has been studied far less than its Jawi counterpart which is used for Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau.^[9]

In the past few decades, the Indonesian language has grown in its prominence and role as the national language of Indonesia. Thus, publishing institutions associated with religious schools have further developed new teaching material, in order to expand the use of Pegon script to Indonesian language as well.^[1] Indonesian language, being a variety of Malay, has also been written by the sister script of Pegon, Jawi.

Etymology

The word Pegon originated from the Javanese word pégo, meaning "deviate", due to the practice of writing the Javanese language with Arabic script, which was considered unconventional by Javanese people.^[3]

History

One of the earliest dated examples of the usage of Pegon may be Masa'il al-ta'lim, a work on Islamic law written in Arabic with interlinear translation and marginal commentary in Javanese. The manuscript is dated 1623 and written on dluwang, a paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree.^[10]

Letters

Pegon uses the original letters of the Arabic script plus an additional seven letters to represent native Javanese sounds not present in Arabic: ca (⟨چ‎⟩ /t͡ʃ/), dha (⟨ڎ‎⟩ /ɖ/), tha (⟨ڟ‎⟩ /ʈ/), nga (⟨ڠ‎⟩ /ŋ/), pa (⟨ڤ‎⟩ /p/), ga (⟨ڮ‎⟩ /g/), and nya (⟨ۑ‎⟩ /ɲ/). One additional letter is used in foreign loanwords: va (⟨ۏ‎⟩ /v/). These new letters are formed by the addition of dots to base letter forms. Pegon is not standardized and variation can be seen in how these additional letters are represented, most commonly in the position of the dots (above or below) and the number of dots (one or three).^[11]

In more recent teaching material, additional letters have been added in order to use the script for writing Indonesian language.^[1]

Representation of vowels

Diacritic marks (harakat) are used in Pegon to represent vowel sounds or in some cases a lack thereof. Their prevalence in Pegon text varies from marking every letter, to being present only to differentiate particular vowel sounds. Full marking of letters is common in most formal texts, including religious texts and historic diplomatic manuscripts.

Arabic script is a (mostly) consonantal writing system, meaning that only consonants are written. Arabic has 3 vowels, each being short or long. There are 3 letters in Arabic ("ا", "و", and "ي") that also represent long vowels. but otherwise the short vowels are marked in diacritic in religious texts or texts meant for beginner learners, that are not marked at all in most everyday texts. But, the phonology of Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese do not make such distinction. Instead there are 6 vowels. Thus, with the use of diacritics in conjuncton with the three aforementioned letters, Arabic script has become fully phonemic in its adoption for languages of Java Island.^[12]

Reduplication

In Pegon script, Reduplication is done in a manner simillar to Jawi script, that is with the use of the numeral "٢" right after the base word.

While suffixed, the numeral "٢" comes in between the base word and the suffix, effectively being in the middle of the word.

while prefixed reduplication of base word is represented with the hypen.^[6]

Javanese Sample words, fully vocalized as well as in Gundhul (unvocalized)::^[12]

Madurese Pèghu

Madurese language has a phonology that is more complicated than its neighbouring languages on the island of Java. It includes /a/ (shown with "a" in Latin) and /ɤ/ (shown with "â" in Latin). It also has a wider range of glottal pauses.

Thus, the Arabic script adopted to Madurese, natively known as Pèghu, is quite different, and still exclusively written vocalized using diacritics.

Madurese also has more consonants than its neighboring languages due to it having voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated (traditionally often transcribed as voiced aspirated), and voiced unaspirated.^[13] But these are not reflected in Pèghu Script.

Comparison of Pegon and Jawi

The main difference between Jawi and Pegon is that the latter is almost always written with vowel diacritics. Javanese written without any vowel diacritics, similar to Jawi is called Gundhul (ڮونڎول‎; ꦒꦸꦤ꧀ꦝꦸꦭ꧀), meaning 'bare/bald' in Javanese. The orthographic rules of Jawi and Pegon differ, with Jawi spelling being much more standardised than Pegon. Pegon tends to write all vowel sounds of native words explicitly, either with full letters or diacritics, whereas Jawi orthography sometimes omits alif in certain positions where an /a/ would be pronounced, similarly other vowel sounds may not be written explicitly.

For those additional letters representing sounds not present in Arabic, some letters have the same appearance in both Jawi and Pegon, while others differ. Pegon also features two additional letters for sounds native to Javanese which are not present in Malay. Also the form of kaf used differs between the two varieties with Pegon using the Arabic form, while Jawi uses the Persian form.

Transliteration

The United States Library of Congress published a romanization standard of Jawi and Pegon in 2012.^[14]

Text samples

The below Islamic quote, in several languages, written in their respective Latin scripts, as well as in Pegon script.

His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of God to all creatures, whatever is told by His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad is the real truth. Therefore all creatures have to corroborate and follow His Majesty the Prophet Muhammad.

Note that in the above examples, there are 5 Arabic Loanwords, which must be written as they would in Arabic. Namely:

• The word Nabi in Latin Script shall be written as نبي in Pegon. It would be incorrect to write نابي.
• The word Muhammad in Latin Script shall be written as محمد in Pegon. It would be incorrect to write موهمماد.
• The word Allah in Latin Script shall be written as الله in Pegon. It would be incorrect to write أللاه.
• The word Makhluk in Latin Script shall be written as مخلوق in Pegon. It would be incorrect to write ماخلوك.
• The word Wajib in Latin Script shall be written as واجب in Pegon. It would be incorrect to write واجيب.

See also

• Jawi alphabet
• Abjad Pegon (in Indonesian)
• Abjad Jawi (in Indonesian)

Footnotes

References

• On Pegon Script for Javanese language: Jamalin, F., & Rahman, A. A. (2021). Arabic-Java Writing System: How Javanese Language Adopts Arabic Script. Izdihar : Journal of Arabic Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature, 4(1), 43–58. https://doi.org/10.22219/jiz.v4i1.11337 (PDF) (Archive)
• On Pegon Script for Sundanese language: Apriyanto, Agung, Ruhaliah Nunuy Nurjanah, and Ruhaliah. (2021) "Structure of the Sundanese Language in the Pegon Script". Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2021). https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211119.006. PDF (Archive)
• Religious book featuring Arabic, with word-by-word Madurese language translation: Syeikh Khalil bin Abdul Latif al-Bankalani al-Maduri (Bangkalan, Madura). (1988) "Al-Matn al-Shareef". https://archive.org/details/SyaikhonaKholil/mode/2up
• Gallop, A. T. (2015). A Jawi sourcebook for the study of Malay palaeography and orthography. Indonesia and the Malay World, 43(125), 13–171.
• Jacquerye, Denis Moyogo. (2019). Proposal to encode Javanese and Sundanese Arabic characters. Unicode.
• Poerwadarminta, W.J.S (1939). Bausastra Jawa [Javanese Dictionary] (in Javanese). Batavia: J.B. Wolters. ISBN 0834803496.