UNESCO recognizes Javanese alphabet

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 11/02/2009 11:52 AM

UNESCO has ranked the Javanese alphabet among other internationally accepted sets of characters used to write in computers like Latin, Chinese and Arabic.

“The Javanese alphabet has been recognized by UNICODE, an organization under UNESCO that deals with alphabetic code standard in computers,” Aryo Tumoro, chief editor of the oldest Javanese magazine Penyebar Semangat told Antara on Monday.

UNICODE awarded the international status to the Javanese alphabet on Oct. 2, the day when UNESCO accepted batik as part of Indonesian cultural assets. The status was proposed by Javanese literature expert Ki Demang Sokowaten from Yogyakarta on Sept. 9, 2007.

“Thanks to the world’s recognition, we can ask our computer programmers to introduce Javanese alphabet as computer fonts,” Aryo said.

Sukowaten launched in January 2006 his Javanese language website www.ki-demang.com, which contains, among other things, Javanese philosophy, short stories, folklores and recipes.