52 THE SUBANU. 
mendable piece of lexicography to have been accomplished by one quite 
ignorant of the science of language. ‘The edition which has been placed 
at my service by the Librarian of Congress is entitled: ‘‘ Diccionario 
Bisaya-Espafiol (Espafiol-Bisaya) compuesto por el R. P. Fr. Juan 
Félix de la Encarnacion . . . tercera edicion aumentada con mas de 
tres mil voces por el R. P. Fr. José Sanchez; Manila, 1885.’ The 
Visayan vocabulary contains some 12,000 items. 
In my earlier characterization of this section of the material, I 
pointed out that the collector had based his work upon a Spanish word- 
list which he had followed somewhat irregularly. Upon my first inspec- 
tion of the Visayan dictionary I discovered that the muchacho had saved 
himself much trouble by following the Spanish-Visayan of Fray Juan 
Félix. ‘This suspicion was fully confirmed when I made the discovery 
that his following had been so uninspired that he had followed even the 
typographical errors. The only difference noted is that he seems to 
have used a dialectic form of the Visayan slightly variant (particularly 
in the use of the vowels a and wu) from the standard of the dictionary. 
This is matter of less moment when we find that the reverend lexi- 
cographer is not consistent with himself, that many words in the 
Spanish-Visayan vary, not only in vowels but in consonants as well, 
from the forms recorded in Visayan-Spanish. 
The original entries seem to have been written by hand with pen or 
pencil, for there appears a constant perturbation factor of imperfectly 
legible chirography. ‘This has produced a most irregular treatment of 
the composition members; at times they are united with the stems to 
which they apply, at other times they stand apart, in the end it is by no 
means certain that this type of error has been wholly corrected. In 
like manner such independent members of the sentence as conjunctions 
are found joined with more important vocables; where the equivalent in 
Visayan has not been discovered it has proved impossible to assort these 
to their proper places. With considerable experience of the haste and 
the bad pen of unready writers, I find that I have visualized a chir- 
ography for this stage of the notes and have had to exercise my wits in 
detecting error attributable to bad writing. Asa single instance from 
many I cite the entry “‘patoel, brother.’’ When the Visayan gives us 
patod we may readily see that we are not dealing with an anomalous 
mutation, but that a loosely penned d has been misread el by the 
transcriber. 
The material reached its second stage when the written notes were 
transcribed upon the typewriter by some clerical assistant. Weassume 
that he was quite ignorant of Subanu, scantily acquainted with the 
Visayan, and imperfectly acquainted with Spanish, as is the wont of the 
enlisted man on foreign service. At this stage was added the fourth 
column of text; against the triple entry of Subanu-Visayan-Spanish is 
now set the English equivalent. Here again I have had the fortune to 
