Lombok's lontar texts are written in Sasak, Kawi (a literary language based on old Javanese) or a combination of the two. They are written in "hanacaraka", a script nearly identical to Balinese. Its basic letters consist of a consonant plus the vowel "a". The first five letters read "ha", "na", "ca", "ra" and "ka", giving the script its name. Syllables with vowels other than "a" use the basic letter plus diacritics above, below or around it. Final consonants of a syllable or consonant clusters may also be encoded.