Javanese script

The Javanese script is taught as local content in primary and secondary schools across Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java, so the number of people who have studied it is very large. The number who read it outside a classroom is far smaller, and the number who write in it smaller still.

The use visible today is on street signs and government offices, required by regional regulation, and on packaging titles. That use states the script's standing as a regional emblem, which differs from its standing as a means of writing. The distinction explains an apparently contradictory situation: the script is seen more often than twenty years ago and used less often to write anything that has to be read.

Its base letters — aksara nglegena — number twenty and each carries an inherent a, so writing any other sound requires a modifying mark. Sandhangan change the vowel, pangkon kills it, and pasangan — a second form of every letter, written below or behind — are used when the preceding syllable ends in a consonant. Twenty letters therefore come with twenty pasangan, plus aksara murda for honoured names, aksara swara for standalone vowels, aksara rekan for Arabic loan sounds, and punctuation of its own.

On top of that, the script is written without spaces between words. A reader must therefore divide the words while reading, and that division depends on knowing what words are likely. This is the technical reason why recognising twenty letters does not produce the ability to read: what obstructs is not the number of letters but the number of decisions per line.

Unicode encoding in 2009 made the script typable and sendable, and phone keyboards exist. That possibility has not yet produced meaningful everyday use, and the reason is the same one: what is scarce is not people who can type it but people who can read it without effort.