Tagbanwa is an alphasyllabary or
abugida in which each letter represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and an
inherent vowel /a/, a feature that it shares with many related scripts from SE Asia as they derive from variants of the
Brahmic scripts of India. Similar to these scripts, vowels other than /a/ are indicated by the addition of a diacritic above (for /i/) or below (for /u/) the letter. Lone vowels are represented by their own, independent letters, thus /a/, /i/ and /u/ since there are only three. Syllables ending in a consonant are written without the final consonant. Tagbanwa is distinguished from
Baybayin by the shapes of several letters, most notably ‹ka› and ‹wa› that are markedly different from other varieties. Tagbanwa is traditionally written on bamboo in vertical columns from bottom to top and left to right. However, it is read from left to right in horizontal lines. Tagbanwa writing makes use of single () and double () punctuation marks. ==Ibalnan==