THE MANGYANS OF MINDORO. 153 



LANGUAGE. 



The language of the coast Mangyans at least belongs to the 

 Philippine family of languages. This is clearly shown by the 

 study of the brief vocabularies which I collected, made by Mr. 

 Schneider of the Bureau of Forestry.- 



One of the most interesting things about the Mangyans is 

 the existence among a certain small section of them of an ancient 

 system of writing. I made careful inquiries everywhere I went 

 among them for people who knew how to write. I found them 

 in only two settlements near Bulalakao and in no other part 

 of the Mangyan country.=^ I heard of one man at a settlement 

 also near Bulalakao who could write. 



Even in the places where the ability to write is found, it is 

 by no means a universal accomplishment. At Dangas there 

 were two people who knew how to write and at Budburan there 

 were seven, two of them women, but not all of these nine people 

 could write readily. Naturally, since the ability to write is not 

 widespread, no great use can be made of it. However, writing 

 occasionally is ehiployed in sending a message from one place 

 to another. These messages are usually written with a knife 

 on a node of bamboo or on a split piece of a node. 



Whatever may have been the practice in the other Philippine 

 systems of writing formerly in use, the Mangyans at the present 

 time write horizontally from left to right.-* 



A comparison of the Mangyan writing with the systems in 

 use at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards among the Iloko, 

 Tagalog, Pampanga, Pangasinan, and Bisaya peoples reveals 

 a close resemblance in general character and in some of the 

 symbols used. Only three of these symbols represent letters, 

 all the others syllables, so that the series of characters is a 

 syllabary rather than an alphabet. The three letters which are 

 represented by symbols are the vowels a, e or i, o or u. The 

 simplest form of the other characters represents the various 



" This number, p. 157. 



^ Mr. R. C. McGregor of the Bureau of Science informs me that he knew 

 a man on the Bako River who could write on bamboo. 



'' T. H. Pardo de Tavera has shown in his pamphlet, Contribucion para 

 el estudio de los antiguos alfabetos filipinos, that it is very unlikely that 

 the ancient Filipinos originally wrote from below upward and that under 

 the influence of Spanish writing they changed to a horizontal left to right 

 order. The Mangyans probably came very little under Spanish influence 

 and the fact that they now write horizontally from left to right supports 

 Tavera's contention. On the other hand Lisboa says: "Porque ellos [the 

 Bikols] escriben y leen de abajo hacia arriba." 



