Ilokano language

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Ilokano (variants: Ilocano, Iluko, Iloco, and Iloko) is the third most-spoken language of the Republic of the Philippines.

Being an Austronesian language, it is related to such languages as Indonesian, Malay, Fijian, Maori (of New Zealand), Hawaiian, Malagasy (of Madagascar), Samoan, Tahitian, Chamorro (of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), Tetum (of East Timor), and Paiwan (of Taiwan).

[edit] History

Ilokanos are descendants of Austronesian-speaking people from southern China via Taiwan.^{[citation needed]} Families and clans arrived by viray or bilog, meaning boat. The term Ilokano originated from i-, meaning "from", and looc, meaning "cove or bay", thus "people of the bay." Ilokanos also refer to themselves as Samtoy, a contraction from the Ilokano phrase saö mi ditoy, meaning "our language here".

[edit] Classification

Ilokano comprises its own branch in the Philippine Cordilleran family of languages. It is spoken as a native language by eight million people.^{[citation needed]}

A lingua franca of the northern region, it is spoken as a secondary language by more than two million people who are native speakers of Pangasinan, Ibanag, Ivatan, and other languages in Northern Luzon.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Geographic distribution

Ilokanos occupy the narrow, barren strip of land in the northwestern tip of Luzon, squeezed in between the inhospitable Cordillera mountain range to the east and the South China Sea to the west. This harsh geography molded a people known for their clannishness, tenacious industry and frugality, traits that were vital for survival.^{[citation needed]} It also induced Ilokanos to become a migratory people, always in search for better opportunities and for land to build a life on. Although their homeland constitutes the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Abra, their population has spread east and south of their original territorial borders.

Ilokano pioneers flocked to the more fertile Cagayan Valley, Apayao mountains and the Pangasinan plains during the 18th and 19th centuries and now constitute a majority in many of these areas.^{[citation needed]} In the 20th century, many Ilokano families moved to Metro Manila and further south to Mindanao. They became the first Filipino ethnic group to immigrate en masse to North America (the so-called Manong generation), forming sizable communities in the American states of Hawaii, California, Washington and Alaska. Ilokano is the native language of most of the original Filipino immigrants in the United States, but Tagalog is used by more Filipino-Americans because it is the national language of the people of the Philippines.^{[citation needed]}

A large, growing number of Ilokanos can also be found in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Canada and Europe.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Writing system

[edit] Pre-Colonial

Pre-colonial Ilokanos of all classes wrote in a syllabic system prior to European arrival. They used a system that is termed as an abugida, or an alphasyllabary. It was similar to the Tagalog and Pangasinan scripts, where each character represented a consonant-vowel, or CV, sequence. The Ilokano version, however, was the first to designate coda consonants with a diacritic mark - a cross virama, shown in the Doctrina Cristiana of 1621, one of the earliest surviving Ilokano publications. Before the addition of the virama, writers had no way to designate coda consonants. The reader, on the other hand, had to guess whether the vowel was read or not.

[edit] Modern

In recent times, there have been two systems in use: The "Spanish" system and the "Tagalog" system. In the Spanish system words of Spanish origin kept their spellings. Native words, on the other hand, conformed to the Spanish rules of spelling. Nowadays, only the older generation of Ilokanos use the Spanish system.

The system based on that of Tagalog is more phonetic. In this system each letter receives one phonetic value, and better reflects the actual pronunciation of the word.^[1] The letters ng, however, constitute a digraph and counts as a single letter, following n in alphabetization. As a result, numo humility appears before ngalngal to chew in newer dictionaries. Words of foreign origin, most notably those from Spanish, need to be changed in spelling to better reflect Ilokano phonology. The weekly magazine Bannawag is known to use this system.

[edit] Samples of the Two System

The following are two versions of the Lord's Prayer. The one on the left is written using the Spanish-based orthography, while the one on the right uses the Tagalog-based system.

[edit] Ilokano and Education

[edit] Literature

Main article: Ilokano literature

Ilokano animistic past offers a rich background in folklore, mythology and superstition (see Religion in the Philippines). There are many stories of good and malevolent spirits and beings. Its creation mythology centers on the giants Aran and her husband Angngalo, and Namarsua (the Creator).

The epic story Biag ni Lam-ang (The Life of Lam-ang) is undoubtedly one of the few indigenous stories from the Philippines that survived colonialism, although much of it is now acculturated and shows many foreign elements in the retelling. It reflects values important to traditional Ilokano society; it is a hero’s journey steeped in courage, loyalty, pragmatism, honor, and ancestral and familial bonds.

Ilokano culture revolves around life rituals, festivities and oral history. These were celebrated in songs (kankanta), dances (sala), poems (daniw), riddles (murmurtia), proverbs (pagsasao), literary verbal jousts called bucanegan (named after the writer Pedro Bucaneg, and is the equivalent of the Balagtasan of the Tagalogs) and epic stories.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Segmental

[edit] Vowels

Modern Ilokano has two dialects, which are differentiated only by the way the letter e is pronounced. In the Amianan (Northern) Dialect, there exist only five vowels while the Abagatan (Southern) Dialect employs six.

• Amianan: /a/, /i/, /u/,/ɛ/,/o/
• Abagatan: /a/, /i/, /u/,/ɛ/,/o/,/ɯ/

The letter in bold is the graphic (written) representation of the vowel.

For a better rendition of vowel distribution, please refer to the IPA Vowel Chart.

Although the modern (Tagalog) writing system is largely phonetic, there are some notable conventions.

[edit] O/U and I/E

In native morphemes, the close back rounded vowel /u/ is written differently depending on the syllable. If the vowel occurs in the ultima of the morpheme, it is written o; elsewhere, u.

Example:
    Root: luto cook
          agluto to cook
          lutuen to cook (something)

Instances such as masapulmonto, You will manage to find it, to need it, are still consistent. Note that masapulmonto is, in fact, three morphemes: masapul (verb base), mo (pronoun) and (n)to (future particle). An exception to this rule, however, is laud /la.ʔud/, west. Also, u in final stressed syllables can be pronounced [o], like [da'nom] for danum (water).

That said, the two vowels are not highly differentiated in native words, due to fact that /o/ was an allophone of /u/ in the history of the language. In words of foreign origin, notably Spanish, they are phonemic.

Example:
    uso use
    oso bear

Unlike u and o, i and e are not allophones, but i in final stressed syllables in words ending in consonants can be [ε], like ubíng [u’bεŋ] (child).

The two closed vowels become glides when followed by another vowel. The close back rounded vowel /u/ becomes [w] before another vowel. The close front unrounded vowel /i/ and becomes the glide [j] before another vowel.

Example:
    kuarta /kwar.ta/ money
    paria /par.ja/ bitter melon

In addition, dental/alveolar consonants become palatalized before /i/. (See Consonants below).

[edit] Northern and Southern Pronunciation of /e/

The letter e represent two vowels in the Southern dialect, /ɛ/ in words of foreign origin and /ɯ/ in native words, and only one in the Northern dialect, /ɛ/.

[edit] Diphthongs

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