An arresting case: The Hanunoo of Mindoro, Philippines

With the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines over four hundred years ago, the In-
die scripts fell into disuse in all but the least accessible places. In I947> Conklin
(1949B) found the scripts still in use among three cultural groups, two in the moun-
tains of Mindoro (Hanunoo, Buhid) and one on the island of Palawan (Tagbanua). The
Hanunoo still use a distinctive Indie script to read, write, memorize, and exchange
messages on a wide range of topics. They use the point of a knife to incise graphs onto
bamboo — and, to a lesser extent, trees, house beams, and whatever else comes to
hand. The main genre of writing, accounting for up to 85% of written communica-
tions, is love songs (Conklin 1949A, 1955, i960; Postma 1989). The other major
function of the script is correspondence. About 70% of the six thousand Hanunoo are
literate enough to be full participants in the rounds of courtship and poetry that dom-
inate Hanunoo leisure. Every family has a minimum of one person who can read and
write.

Literacy has a central place in Hanunoo culture, and most adolescents achieve it
quickly. Not learning carries no penalty, although it is apparently more fun to read,
write, and court than just to court (Conklin 1959). In Conklin's (i960) account, a
young girl, Maling, at the start of adolescent courtship took an interest in transcribing
and memorizing love songs. Within a few months, not long after her original practice
texts had likely been devoured by weevils, Maling could write down her own songs.
The Hanunoo do not have a conventional order for memorizing their letters, and Ma-
ling worked first with the letters of her own name and gradually added new ones. If
she had been left-handed, she could have worked in a mirror image, for the Hanunoo
read with equal skill in all directions.

Words in Hanunoo are primarily disyllabic, and syllables can be closed by a final
consonant in a CVC shape. The Hanunoo script, shown in table 45.7, represents
only vowel-final syllables.

Three graphs represent the vowels alone; fifteen graphs represent syllables con-
sisting of a consonant-vowel pair; in addition, each of the fifteen CV syllables can
have its final vowel changed by the addition of a kulit, a small diacritic on the left or

table 45.7: The Hanunoo Syllabary (after Conklin 1971) u

q- h- p- k- s- I- r- t- n- b- m-

8-

d-

y- n-

w-

-a~ h i/t/jt-yviikfhfhfTri tx

9

^

1S\ |X<

~h>

-u~ } l/>7^*e'tejVlfltyh*7£l T*

i

He

1SX- \^>

*w

A~ 1/' (? J* I s Tdj *i ty tv i£ 7 7*

h

*

-is* v*

~h>

a. Listed in the 16th-century Tagalog sequence, with the addition of r-; no Hanunoo order is known today.

b. The symbol ~ represents any consonant or no consonant.

right of the syllable graph that changes, e.g., k. ba to i^ hi or N4 bu. In table 45.7,
the graphs are oriented horizontally, and the kulit marks appear on the top and bottom;
graphs can be read from any direction, but all the graphs in a single line must be sim-
ilarly oriented. Each syllable can receive a final consonant, and a reader must use
word context to choose from among sixteen possibilities; for example, t^. ba can be
read as [ba], [ba?], [bab], [bad], [bag], [bak], [bal], [bam], [ban], '[bar], [bap],
[bar], [bas], [bat], [baw], or [baj] (Conklin 1953: 9).

Many of the love songs, called 'ambdhan, take traditional form in a seven-sylla-
ble line. The sample text is a seven-line 'ambdhan (from among thousands available,
Postma 1989 offers a translation of 261 ranging in length from 3 to 135 lines). The
example is written in columns, from bottom to top, away from the body, as is the usual
but not required Hanunoo custom. A two-to-one closed-to-open syllable ratio holds
for most 'ambdhan, although an account of less formal writing would reverse the per-
centages. In this text, individual Hanunoo graphs are all oriented vertically with the i
diacritic appearing on the left and the u diacritic appearing on the right.

Sample of Hanunoo

This 'ambdhan is sung as a lullaby {'iyaya) to a child. Reading proceeds from bottom
to top, starting at the left.

* \ \ £

% ' & & IS.

X *N^ A K\ K J«K

> * & > > >

% 9* & % l. K

%

it

%

it

K

/. Hanunoo:

2. Transliteration:

J. Transcription:

4. Gloss:

1. S? H?

2. ku-ti

3. kuti

h

gi
gin

da-na
dairja
don't

I*,
sa

ma-lu-mi-ma-lu-mi / ki-ta ma-nu-ga ku-ti /
maglumi-maglumi? kita
keep.crying we

madnugan ku ti?
will.be.heard cat

"Hj tn \X
si-ya-ni /
sijarji?

4. cat coming from Siyangi

ma-qi-na

mag?irjaw

will.screech

7< in m \X
ma-ya-ya-ni /
magjarjjarji?

scream

J.

5 s h/

}

7<

V' 7 7~

>o lv

7 y°

7f 7 ty

2.

ki-ta

qu

ma

qi-ba-wi /

ka-ta

ba-ka

na-ba-ri /

3-

kita

Pud

maj

?iba:wi?

kanta

barjkaw

nabairi?

4>

we

do. not

have

effective.arms

our

spear

is. broken

i.

>> v

} *

Jf

Mf 1

2.

ka-ta

qu-ta

na

-lu-bi

3-

kanta

?utak

nalumbi?

4-

our

bolo

is.bent.in.two

'Don't cry anymore, or we'll be heard by the wild cat

The wild cat from Siyangi, who will let out a terrifying cry

And we can't do anything about it, because our hunting spear is broken

And our bolo is bent in two.'

—From Conklin 1955, side 1, band 4 of the record; page 4 of the booklet.

Philippines

Bernardo, Gabriel. 1953. A Bibliography of the Old Philippine Syllabaries. Quezon City: Library,
University of the Philippines.

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. 1949B. "Preliminary Report on Field Work on the Islands of Mindoro and Palawan." Amer-
ican Anthropologist 5 1 : 268-73.

. 1953. Hanunoo-English Vocabulary (University of California Publications in Linguistics

9). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

. 1955. Hanunoo Music from the Philippines. Ethnic Folkways Library Album FE4466. New

York: Folkways Records. Reissued in 1992 as Smithsonian Institution Folkways Casette
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. 1959. "Linguistic Play in Its Cultural Context." Language 35: 631-36.

. i960. "Maling, a Hanunoo girl in the Philippines." In In the Company of Man, ed. Joseph

Casagrande, pp. 101-18. New York: Harper and Row.

. 1971. "Indie Scripts of the Philippines." Paper presented at the Oriental Club of New Ha-
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1 99 1. "Doctrina Christiana, en lengua espanola y tagala, Manila, 1593: Rosenwald Col-

lection 1302." In Vision of a Collector: The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in the Library of

Congress/Rare Book and Special Collections Division, ed. K Mang and P. VanWingen, pp. 36-

40, 119. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.
Gardiner, Fletcher. 1943. Philippine Indie Studies. San Antonio: Witte Memorial Museum.
Postma, Antoon. 1971. "Contemporary Mangyan scripts." Philippine Journal of Linguistics 2: 1-12.

. 1 986. A Primer to Mangyan Script. Panaytayan.

. 1989. Ambahan Mangyan. Manila: Arnoldus Press.

Revel, Nicole. 1990-92. Fleurs de paroles: Histoire naturelle Palawan, 3 vols. Louvain: Peeters.

Romualdez, Norberto. 19 14. "Alfabeto Tagbanua." Cultura Filipina 5: 53-82.

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ed. Quezon City: New Day Publisher.

THE WORLD ' S **-* -ISS^-HSr

WRITING SYSTEMS p ^lT Ms "=^g==^

William Bright , Dm ll":; ,;,!■*"",; B ,litnl\^