It is a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge the assistance rendered by my
wife, who accompanied me throughout my Philippine work. Her presence
made it possible to secure the complete confidence of the hill people,
and thus to gain an insight into their home life which otherwise would
have been impossible. A large part of the material here presented,
particularly that relating to the women, was gathered by her and many of
the photographs are from her camera.

The dialects spoken by the tribes of central and southern Mindanao are
to be dealt with in a separate publication, so that at this time I shall
merely give a brief description of the characters appearing in the
native names used in this paper. The consonants are pronounced as in
English, except _r_ which is as in Spanish. _c_ is used as _ch_ in
_church_, _ñ_, which occurs frequently, is a palatal nasal. There is no
clear articulation and the stop is not present, but the back of the
tongue is well up on the soft palate.

The vowels are used as follows:
_macron-a_ like _a_ in _father_
_macron-e_ like _a_ in _fate_
_macron-i_ like _i_ in _ravine_
_macron-o_ like _o_ in _note_
_macron-u_ like _u_ in _flute_
_a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, short of the above.

[Transcribers' note: The macron-over-vowel orthographic symbols have
regretfully been irreproducible in this document.]

_E_ is a sound between the obscure vowel _e_, as _e_ in _sun_, and the
_ur_ in _burrow_.