Why are there missing letters?
The program was designed to work well with Tagalog words, which means that 
it won't work too well with foreign words or newer Tagalog words that are 
rooted from the English or Spanish language.  
You may have learned by now that each symbol in the original Baybayin script 
represents a syllable. There are only 4 forms of syllables found in the Tagalog 
language: Single Vowel (V), Consonant-Vowel (CV), Vowel-Consonant (VC) and 
Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC)forms. Baybayin symbols exist for syllables in V 
and CV forms, however when writing syllables in VC or CVC forms, the ancient 
Filipinos would drop the trailing consonant. For example, when writing the words 
"Bathala Na" (Leave it to God), the letter "t" would be dropped making it 
"Bahala Na." 
It is still not known to this day how our ancestors were able to read back the 
missing consonants.
Return to the "Frequently Asked Questions"