An Introduction to Baybayin Paperback – August 4, 2009

I appreciate this book because it is an easy to digest layman's introduction to Baybayin script. If this is your first or second step into Baybayin script, this would be a good book to read. If you have a passion for Baybayin and want to introduce it to your non-Filipino friends, your junior high cousins, or your busy parents/aunts/uncles this is a great book to introduce to them. Half the book contains practice pages. If you are wanting to learn in-depth about the linguistics or into phonology this may not be the book for you. Otherwise, supporting Filipinos write about Filipino culture is a worthwhile endeavor.

At its core, it is a good book - it teaches you the strokes you need to learn, then the characters one by one. The only issue is that the examples are artistic brush strokes, which may confuse you later on (ie: typeface fonts look different, handwriting, etc.)

While trying to embrace my filipino heritage I stumbled across this book. Baybayin is a dying language used in the Philippines. Due to a surge of Pinoy Pride, members of a younger generations are trying to revive it. This book is just a small sample of a beautiful language. I love this book.

If you are looking to learn about Baybayin, here it is

1/2 of the book are practice pages for writing and there was lack of in-depth discussion on the topic.

I am truly disappointed by the quality of this book's content. Its tone is informal, its treatment of the topic shallow. At the end of the book, it even lists links to Baybayin tattoo websites; how can it be anything other than commercial?I purchased this book for academic research. After reading all of its 50 pages without profit, I will need another book.

I had the honor of meeting the author at an annual event, Fiesta Filipina, in the midwest. Intrigued by his performance and knowing nothing, being completely unaware of Baybayin I had to buy both his books. If you truly want an “Introduction to Baybayin” THIS IS IT! It’s a very fast read and very simple to comprehend. If you’re like me, a few days of reading and applying this you’ll find yourself on autopilot, mistakenly writing ‘you’’s instead of ‘who’’s because they sound the same. That’s when you know you’ve got it! The beginning was to the point and concise about the history and then goes on about the letters and writing. There’s also space in the book to practice and other resources he mentions towards the end of the book. And he provides extra worksheets on his site. If you’re looking for hefty historical content of this writing system, you may need to look elsewhere. And good luck.

Excellent.

Not worth the price for a 50 pager rmaterial front to back. More of a compilation and musing of an enthusiast but does no more than inspire a curiosity and nothing more. You can learn more from Wikipedia and some blog sites. Unless you are a passionate historian, scholar or academic, one would invest on a lot of research only to understand the rationale, purpose of the script which would help the interested and uninitiated. Not enough if one really wanted to end up writing his own name, the pater noster or ones national anthem after reading this book and a few days/weeks of practice. That will be worth my near $20 worth of kindle product. I don’t know if there is or what the paperback looks like, but the pictograms or samples couldn’t have been any worse. There has got to be a properly written book or reference for this that should be worth it if I want to understand a culture and learn a new skill/art script that is genuine and not just a commercially motivated spark of ingenuity. 1 star because there’s no option for a no-star.

poor content..but pretty usefull for begginers and who ever want to learn about baybayin the filipino scrypt. support the baybayin