516 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
The true position of this alphabet as far as I have been able to 
observe in the various writings of this tribe is as follows: 
“ee 99 66 
The first three corresponding to “a, eoi,” and“ o” andthe 
last letter ‘ua,’ are vowels and do not admit of any variation in 
their denomination ; while the remaining fourteen composed of semi- 
vowels and consonants, form different sounds, according to the 
triangular-shaped mark placed either above or below the character 
and which is an essential part of each of these characters. The 
rules of orthography of this writing demand this in order to ex- 
press in a clear manner when the character should be read “ bi, la, 
ba,” or when it should be “bo,” for the characters are words and 
not a real alphabet. The use of the triangular mark is indispensable. 
Without it, it would be impossible to form entire phrases and com- 
plete words easily understood. For the better comprehension of the 
reader we will illustrate with a simple example. 
As has been seen above, the natural denominations of these letters 
composed of consonants and semi-vowels are: “ba-ba” to express 
our “b”; “ da-da” to express our “d.” However if the triangular 
mark is placed above these characters it then will be “bi, di”; if it 
is placed below, the sound then becomes “ bo, do.” 
The Tagbanua alphabet lacks the letters c, f, i, g, Il, q, r, v, x, z, 
of the Spanish alphabet and for this reason the sound of the word 
