The Javanese language
and how it is written

Where Javanese ranks

Javanese is the 31st most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Javanese

The design of Javanese script

A Brahmic abugida descended from Kawi, itself from the Pallava script of South India^[6,5]. Its 20 basic consonants are traditionally recited as a four-line poem, hanacaraka^[8]. Today Javanese is mostly written in Latin letters^[3].

Abugida (syllabic). Each consonant carries a vowel, changed by marks attached to it.

Kind

Abugida (syllabic)

Direction

Left to right

Took shape

Out of Kawi, used in Java from about the 8th century CE

Line of descent

Brahmi → Pallava → Kawi → Javanese

Traditional surface

Palm leaves

Own digits

꧐ ꧑ ꧒ ꧓ ꧔ ꧕ ꧖ ꧗ ꧘ ꧙

Also writes

No other language among the 38 is written mainly in Javanese script.

• An alphabet that tells a story

  The 20 letters in order read 'ha na ca ra ka, da ta sa wa la, pa dha ja ya nya, ma ga ba tha nga', a poem about the two servants of the legendary Aji Saka who fought to the death^[8].

• Letters that hang below

  To write a cluster, the second consonant takes a special subscript form, a pasangan, that hangs below the line and cancels the vowel of the letter before it^[9].

• No spaces

  Traditional Javanese text runs words together without spaces, with punctuation marking larger breaks^[9].

• Grammar of status

  Javanese has speech levels — informal ngoko, polite krama and the intermediate madya — that change words depending on the listener's status^[3].

Javanese is also written in Latin alphabet.

Explore the letters

Numbers in Javanese script

Javanese's relatives among the 38

Javanese belongs to the Austronesian family (Malayo-Polynesian). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• Bahasa IndonesiaIndonesianSame branch: Malayo-Polynesian · 255M
• TagalogTagalog (Filipino)Same branch: Malayo-Polynesian · 87M

Javanese across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Javanese.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Javanese (people and language)
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Old Javanese language
5. Omniglot — Kawi script
6. Omniglot — Javanese script
7. Wikipedia — Laguna Copperplate Inscription (900 CE)
8. Museum Sonobudoyo, Yogyakarta — Javanese script and the written tradition of the archipelago
9. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 17: Southeast Asia-II (Javanese, Philippine scripts, Kawi)
10. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Alphabet (writing)
11. Omniglot — Latin alphabet
12. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 7: Europe-I (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic)
13. Omniglot — Classical Latin alphabet
14. Omniglot — Carolingian minuscule
15. Omniglot — Fraktur
16. Omniglot — Phoenician alphabet
17. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Javanese

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.