52 Chapter 2 Phonology
ficient number of symbols to represent this three-way contrast. Additionally, the
vowel inventories of the two languages do not match, so the appropriate sym-
bols were not available for every consonant-vowel combination. Most of the
alphabetic systems that followed pretty much suffered from the same lack of
symbols.
An exception is the Roman script alphabet devised by Kiliaan, who used
it in his grammar (1897) and dictionary (1904), based on the system introduced
for Javanese, Indonesian and other languages of Indonesia. This alphabet did
capture the three-way phonation contrast for stops: voiceless stops and voiced
stops were represented by the typical symbols. Aspirated stops were represented
in two-letter sequences of the voiced stop followed by h. So, [p] was
represented as bh, [] as dh, and so on. The retroflex stops were distinguished
from the dental stops as is customary in many phonetic transcriptions schemes,
using a diacritic below the stop symbol; so, [ṭ], [ṭ], and [ḍ] were represented as
ṭ, ḍh, and ḍ, respectively. The complete inventory of consonant symbols was:
(72) Orthography of the Colonial Period
sound symbol symbol
p p q
p bh h h
b b m m
t t n n dh (^) ɲ nj
d d ng
ṭ ṭ s s
ṭ ḍh r r
ḍ ḍ l l
c tj j y
c djh w w
dj
k k (^)
k gh (^)
g g (^)