Makasar

The Makasar script (also called Lontara’ Jangang-jangang or “chicken-scratch Lontara”) is a traditional writing system used in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, by speakers of the Makasarese language. It is related to the broader Lontara script family that includes Buginese but has distinct letterforms that resemble small bird footprints, which gives rise to its colloquial name. Makasar is an abugida written from left to right in which consonant letters carry an inherent /a/ vowel; other vowels are represented by diacritical marks. Unlike the standard Lontara script, Makasar uses a final consonant killer mark to suppress the inherent vowel. The script was historically used for recording contracts, royal correspondence, and literary works, but its use declined following Dutch colonisation. It was added to Unicode in version 11.0 (2018) as part of broader efforts to encode Southeast Asian minority scripts.