Shout out @rylie for the idea. ᜃᜒᜈ᜔ᜇᜋ This is the word Kendama written in Baybayin, the ancient alphabet of the Philippines. What does "Kendama" look like in other alphabets and forms of writing? Thought it would be a cool idea to see the word written differently. Comment below! P.S. download the Baybayin font here to view the word!
if you haven't known it already, the Japanese written word for kendama is けん玉 (ke-n-dama), where the last kanji character is broken to たま (ta-ma). The reason why the end product is pronounced "kendama", instead of "kentama" is explained in this Wikipedia entry about the Japanese speech phenomenon called rendaku. As for my native language, the Malay language follows the "tulisan Rumi" (lit. Roman script) system, so it's still written as Kendama in Malaysia.
At it's core form "tulis" means write. Adding the "an" suffix modifies it into a present participle, which translates to the word "writing". Scriptures are a form of writing, so voila. Hahahaha i absolutely love how the languages of the nearby countries have similar sounds but have way different meanings. Oooooooo snap! I almost forgot that we have the Jawi Alphabet, which was used widely in the Malay archipelago before being replaced with Tulisan Rumi. So, kendama looks like this in Jawi (reads right to left, and it may not render properly in some operating systems): كندام The Jawi alphabet is derived from the Arabic writing system, used widely around the 14th century, and still used as an alternative script in Malaysia, and in some parts of Indonesia, and is one of two official scripts of Brunei.
Well as it started, let's try it in Chinese although it is quite similar to Japanese. 劍 ken, which means sword particularly 玉 tama, and it is referred to jade actually But this conbination is kinda like a direct translate from Japanese, which we keep the kanji of tama. In fact, there're various names for Kendama, especially in China, they call it: 劍球 which referred to a sword with a ball. In Taiwan, the elders call it 日月球, while 日月 means sun and moon, not so sure the origins but this is quite special and interesting.
The earliest instance of that name is in Japan, in 1919, where the sarado was attached to the ken. It’s called nichi getsu boru, due to the ball’s likeness to the sun (nichi), and the cup’s likeness to the moon crescent (getsu).
Here's what it looks like in Baybayin if you don't have the font and a cooperative browser. (Thanks @rylie for the post info on this the other day)