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Young Hanunó'o men and women (called layqaw) learn the script primarily in order to memorize love songs. The goal is to learn as many songs as possible, and using the script to write the songs facilitates this process.
Nov 4, 2023 · Consisting of 77 bamboo items in the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection inscribed with Mangyan script from the Philippines and accompanying transliterations and translations, this collection preserves an endangered writing system and tradition.
The Hanunó'o script is used to write love songs or ʼambāhan, and also for correspondence. About 70% of the Hanunó'o are able to read and write their language, and there is at least one person in each family who is literate. The script is also known as Mangyan Baybayin or Surat Mangyan.
At panludan funerary feasts, young men and women engage in a highly stylized pattern of courtship involving the exchange of love songs (ambahan). The boy starts and the girl answers, both aiming to choose the wittiest or most appropriate verse.
The name ambahan may have been derived from the root word amba, "talk, prayer, or invocation to the spirits of their forefathers". However, the actual use and meaning of ambahan is much wider, as will be shown later. The ambahan may best be explained by setting down some of its characteristics as.
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
They speak an Austronesian language, and most are literate, using an Indic-derived script that they write on bamboo. The Hanun ó o were largely out of contact with schools and missions at least as late as the early 1950s.
