Ilokano

=Ilokano language= From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search{| class="infobox" style="width: 22em; text-align: left; font-size: 88%; line-height: 1.5em;" ! colspan="3" style="text-align: center; font-size: 125%; font-weight: bold; color: black; background-color: pink;"|Ilocano !Spoken in United States !Region !Total speakers !Ranking !Language family !Writing system Historically written in Baybayin ! colspan="3" style="text-align: center; color: black; background-color: pink;"|Official status !Official language in !Regulated by ! colspan="3" style="text-align: center; color: black; background-color: pink;"|Language codes !ISO 639-1 !ISO 639-2 !ISO 639-3 Ilocano (Ilocano: Ti Pagsasao nga Iloco; also Ilocano, Iluko, Iloco, Iloco, Ylocano, and Yloco) is the third most-spoken language of the Republic of the Philippines.
 * Philippines,
 * colspan="2"|Northern Luzon
 * colspan="2"|7.7 million, 2.3 million 2nd language = 10 million total; 3rd most spoken native language in the Philippines[1]
 * colspan="2"|82
 * colspan="2" style="text-align: left; line-height: 100%;"|Austronesian
 * Malayo-Polynesian
 * Philippine
 * Northern Philippine
 * Northern Luzon
 * Ilocano
 * colspan="2"|Latin (Ilocano or Filipino variant);
 * colspan="2"|Regional language in the Philippines
 * colspan="2"|Commission on the Filipino Language
 * colspan="2"|None
 * colspan="2"|ilo
 * colspan="2"|ilo
 * class="boilerplate metadata" colspan="3" style="padding: 0.5em; line-height: 10pt;"|Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
 * }
 * }

An Austronesian language, it is related to such languages as Indonesian, Malay, Fijian, Maori, Hawaiian, Malagasy, Samoan, Tahitian, Chamorro, Tetum, and Paiwan. {| class="toc" id="toc"

Contents
[hide]*1 History
 * 2 Classification
 * 3 Geographic distribution
 * 4 Writing system
 * 4.1 Pre-Colonial
 * 4.2 Modern
 * 4.3 Samples of the two systems
 * 5 Ilokano and education
 * 6 Literature
 * 7 Phonology
 * 7.1 Segmental
 * 7.1.1 Vowels
 * 7.1.1.1 O/U and I/E
 * 7.1.1.2 Amianan and Abagatan pronunciation of /e/
 * 7.1.2 Diphthongs
 * 7.1.3 Consonants
 * 7.2 Prosody
 * 7.2.1 Stress
 * 7.2.1.1 Lexical
 * 7.2.1.2 Pitch
 * 8 Grammar
 * 9 Lexicon
 * 9.1 Borrowings
 * 9.2 Common expressions
 * 9.3 Numbers (Bilang), Days (Aldaw), Months (Bulan)
 * 9.3.1 Numbers (Bilang)
 * 9.3.2 Days of the week (Aldaw ti Lawas)
 * 9.3.3 Months (Bulan)
 * 9.3.4 Units of time
 * 10 More Ilokano words
 * 11 Notes
 * 12 External links
 * }

[edit] History
The Ilocano people are descended from Austronesian-speaking people from Southern China who traveled to the archipelago via present-day Taiwan. Families and clans arrived by viray or bilog, or "boat". The term Ilocano, as commonly accepted, originates from i-, which denotes "from", and looc, meaning "cove or bay", thus giving them the name "People of the bay." Some modern scholars, however, argue that as far as the Ilocano tradition of giving names to their place of residency is concerned, the i + looc etymology is actually an exonym. These scholars suggest that the term Ilocano comes from "i-", "from", and "lucong", "the flat lands" or "the lowlands". Ilocanos also refer to themselves with the endonym Samtoy, a contraction of the phrase sao mi atoy, meaning "this is our language".

[edit] Classification
Ilocano 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
Ilokano population distribution. Enlarge picture to see percent distribution.Ilocanos 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.

Ilocano 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 basis for Filipino, 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, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Australia and Europe.[citation needed]

[edit] Writing system
Our Father prayer from Doctrina Cristiana, 1621.===[edit] Pre-Colonial=== Pre-colonial Ilocanos 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 or 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 Ilocanos use the Spanish system.

The system based on that of Tagalog is more phonetic. Each letter receives one phonetic value, and better reflects the actual pronunciation of the word.[2] 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 systems
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
With the implementation of the Bilingual Education System of 1897, Ilocano, together with the other seven major languages (those that have at least a million speakers), was allowed to be used as a medium of instruction until the second grade. It is recognized by the Commission on the Filipino Language as one of the major languages of the Philippines.[citation needed] Constitutionally, Ilocano is an auxiliary official language in the regions where it is spoken and serves as auxiliary media of instruction therein.[3]

In recent years, a movement in both the Lower and the Upper House of the Congress pressed for the usage of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction until the sixth grade.[citation needed]

[edit] Literature
Main article: Ilokano literature Ilocano 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.

Ilocano culture revolves around life rituals, festivities and oral history. These were celebrated in songs (kankanta), dances (sala), poems (daniw), riddles (burburtia), 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] Vowels
Modern Ilocano 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. 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.
 * Amianan: /a/, /i/, /u/,/ɛ/,/o/
 * Abagatan: /a/, /i/, /u/,/ɛ/,/o/,/ɯ/

Unstressed /a/ is pronounced [ɐ] in all positions except final syllables, like madí [mɐˈdi] (cannot be) but ngiwat (mouth) is pronounced [ˈŋiwat].

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 [dɐ.ˈnom] 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 [ɛ], like ubíng [ʊ.ˈbɛŋ] (child).

The two closed vowels become glides when followed by another vowel. The close back rounded vowel /u/ becomes [w] before another vowel; and the close front unrounded vowel /i/, [j]. Example: kuarta /kwaɾ.ta/ money paria /paɾ.ja/ bitter melon In addition, dental/alveolar consonants become palatalized before /i/. (See Consonants below).

Unstressed /i/ and /u/ are pronounced [ɪ] and [ʊ] except in final syllables, like pintás (beauty) [pɪn.ˈtas] and buténg (fear) [bʊ.ˈtɛŋ] but bangir (other side) and parabur (grace) are pronounced [ˈba.ŋiɾ] and [pɐ.ˈɾa.buɾ].

[edit] Amianan and Abagatan pronunciation of /e/
The letter e represent two vowels in the Abagatan (Southern) dialect, /ɛ/ in words of foreign origin and /ɯ/ in native words, and only one in the Amianan (Northern) dialect, /ɛ/.

[edit] Diphthongs
Diphthongs are combination of a vowel and /i/ or /u/. In the orthography, the secondary vowels (underlying /i/ or /u/) are written with their corresponding glide, y or w, respectively. Of all the possible combinations, only /ai/ or /ei/, /iu/, /ai/ and /ui/ occur. In the orthography, vowels in sequence such as uo and ai, do not coelesce into a diphthong, rather, they are pronounced with an intervening glottal stop, for example, buok hair /bʊ.ʔuk/ and dait sew /da.ʔit/. The diphthong [ei] is a variant of [ai] in native words. Other occurrences are in words of Spanish and English origin. Examples are reyna [ˈɾei.na] (from Spanish reina, queen) and treyner [ˈtɾei.nɛɾ] (trainer). The diphthongs [oi] and [ui] may be interchanged since [o] is an allophone of [u] in final syllables. Thus, apúy (fire) may be pronounced [ɐ.ˈpoi] and baboy (pig) may be pronounced [ˈba.bui].

[edit] Consonants
All consonantal phonemes except are /h, ʔ/ may be a syllable onset or coda. The phoneme /h/ is a borrowed sound and rarely occurs in coda position. Although, the Spanish word, reloj, clock, would have been heard as [re.loh], the final /h/ is dropped resulting in /re.lo/. However, this word also may have entered the Ilokano lexicon at early enough a time that the word was still pronounced /re.loʒ/, with the j pronounced as in French, resulting in /re.los/ in Ilokano. As a result, both /re.lo/ and /re.los/ occur.

The glottal stop /ʔ/ is not permissible as coda; it can only occur as onset. Even as an onset, the glottal stop disappears in affixation. Take for example the root aramat, use. When prefixed with ag-, the expected form is *ag-aramat /ʔɐɡ.ʔɐ.ra.mat/. But, the actual form is, in fact, agaramat /ʔɐ.ɡɐ.ra.mat/; the glottal stop disappears. In a reduplicated form, the glottal stop returns and participates in the template, CVC, agar-aramat /ʔɐ.ɡar.ʔɐ.ra.mat/.

Stops are pronounced without aspiration. When they occur as coda, they are not released, for example, sungbat [sʊŋ.bat̚] answer, response.

Ilokano is one of the Philippine languages which is excluded from [ɾ]-[d] allophony, as /r/ in many cases is derived from a Proto-Austonesian */G/, compare dugô (Tagalog) and dara (Ilokano) blood.

The language marginally has a trill [r] which was spelled as “rr”, for example, serrek [sɛ.ˈrɛk] to enter. But it is different in proper names of foreign origin, mostly Spanish, like Serrano, which is correctly pronounced [sɛ.ˈrano]. Some speakers, however, pronounce Serrano as [sɛ.ˈɾano].

[edit] Lexical
Stress is phonemic or lexical in Ilokano. This results in minimal pairs such as káyo (wood) and kayó (you (plural or polite)) or kíta (class, type, kind) and kitá (see). In written Ilokano, stress is not indicated, thus kayo and kita. Regardless of that fact, phonemic patterns can be found that give a good indication how to determine the primary stress of a given root.

[edit] Pitch
Primary stressed syllables are lower in pitch compared to the rest of the prosodic word.

[edit] Grammar
Main article: Ilokano grammarIlokano is typified by a predicate-initial structure. Verbs and adjectives occur in the first position of the sentence, then the rest of the sentence follows.

Ilokano uses a highly complex list of affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes and enclitics) and reduplications to indicate a wide array of grammatical categories. Learning simple root words and corresponding affixes goes a long way in forming cohesive sentences.

[edit] Borrowings
An Ilocano Dictionary published by the CICM Fathers to help them in evangelising the Ilocandia.Ilokano's vocabulary has a closer affinity to languages from Borneo. Foreign accretion comes largely from Spanish, followed by English and smatterings of Hokkien (Min Nan), Arabic and Sanskrit.

[edit] Numbers (Bilang)
Main article: Ilokano numbersIlokano uses two number systems, one native and the other derived from Spanish. Ilokano uses a mixture of native and Spanish numbers. Traditionally Ilokano numbers are used for quantities and Spanish numbers for time or days and references. Examples:

Spanish:
 * Mano ti tawenmo? (How old are you?)
 * Beintiuno. (Twenty one.)
 * Luktanyo dagiti Bibliayo iti libro ni Juan kapitulo tres bersikolo diesiseis.
 * Open your Bibles to the book of John chapter three verse sixteen.

Ilokano:
 * Mano a kilo a bagas ti kayatmo? (How many kilos of rice do you want?)
 * Sangapulo laeng. (Ten only.)
 * Adda dua nga ikan kenkuana.
 * He has two fish. (lit. There are two fish with him.)

[edit] Days of the week (Aldaw ti Lawas)
Days of the week are directly borrowed from Spanish.

[edit] Months (Bulan)
Like the days of the week, the names of the months are taken from Spanish.

[edit] Units of time
The names of the units of time are either native or are derived from Spanish. The first entries in the following table are native; the second entries are Spanish derived. To mention time, Ilokanos use a mixture of Spanish and Ilokano:
 * 1:00 a.m. A la una iti bigat (One in the morning)
 * 2:30 p.m. A las dos imedia iti malem (in Spanish, Son las dos y media de la tarde or "half past two in the afternoon")

[edit] More Ilokano words

 * ading = younger brother/sister
 * awan = none
 * adda = there is
 * al-alya = ghost/spirit
 * ama = father
 * apan = to go
 * apay = why
 * apong = grandparent
 * apong baket = grandmother
 * an-nay! = ouch!
 * aso = dog
 * aysus! = oh, Jesus/oh, my God!
 * apong lakay = grandfather
 * babae = female
 * baboy = pig
 * bado = clothing / attire
 * badok = traditional jendo martial arts uniform/my attire/my uniform/my clothing
 * baket = old women / wife
 * balla (or bagtit, which is the most usable word) = crazy
 * bangsit = stink
 * barok = young boy
 * basang = young girl
 * (ag)basa = (to) read
 * basit= small
 * basul = fault, wrongdoing
 * bisin = hunger
 * (ag)buya = (to) watch
 * dadael = destroy/ruin
 * damdama = later
 * digos = bath
 * buneng = bladed tool / sword
 * gayyem = friend
 * kaanakan = niece / nephew
 * kabalyo = horse
 * kabsat = sibling
 * kanayon = always
 * kasinsin = cousin
 * katawa = laugh
 * kuddot/keddel = pinch
 * ina/inang/nanang = mother
 * laing = intelligence
 * lakay = old man / husband
 * lalaki = male
 * mabisin = hungry
 * manang = older sister or relative; can also be applied to women a little older than the speaker
 * mangan = eat