Language maps

One way to improve articles on Wikipedia is to include images. How does this work for language-related articles? For starters, you could include a map of the area where the language is spoken.

For Philippine languages, this can be quite tricky. The Philippine situation is unlike the situation in, say, Japan where almost everyone speaks Japanese. So all you'd need to do is put a map of Japan and color it green and say "everyone there speaks Japanese!"

Ok, ok, the pedant in me says screams that Japan is not that simple either. I mean, for a more detailed map you'd need to show where dialects such as Kansai-ben and Kagoshima-ben, not to mention coloring areas where the dying Ryukyuan and Ainu languages are spoken. But you get the idea.

One of the problems is the famous question concerning dialects, where does a language begin and end? Even native speakers themselves have a hard time drawing a line in the sand. Yes, there is Ethnologue, which says there are over 160 Philippine languages but both you and I know that number can change at a moment's notice, depending on whom you speak to. This is because that there is little research done on speech varieties spoken in a different areas - from my understandings, SIL linguists have to go on Swadesh lists and the like. But as time goes on, more definitive research comes in and thus a clearer picture of the Philippine language situation becomes reality.

A related problem is the issue of names. In a previous blog entry, I mentioned that millions of Cebuano speakers simply disappeared in the 2000 Census's Mother Tongue category between the years 1995 and 2000. What was the problem? The appearance of a new "Bisaya/Binisaya" category was to blame. Many people in the Visayan islands simply call their respective languages "Bisaya" or "Binisaya" whether they are living in Allen, Northern Samar or Davao City! Many native speakers simply do not use the linguistic names that linguists have assigned to their languages, be it Dispoholnon or Porohanon - it's just plain Bisaya. Others have no specific names, like Bantayan Visayan. This is reflected in the Bikol, Ifugao, and Manobo languages as well.

Then you have problems like Davaoeño - which could refer to a dialect of Cebuano, Tagalog, or Chavacano or even the language related to Mansakan. Ay ay ay!

The four main sources that I consulted were Ethnologue, the 2000 Census, Dr. Curtis McFarland 1983 work A Linguistic Atlas of the Philippines, and Dr. R. David Zorc's 1977 The Bisayan Dialects of the Philippines.

I really want to get a copy of the CD from the National Statistics Office. It has statistics down to the barangay! That would really help in making the maps more detailed. The CDs are available here but no one has answered my e-mail. :-(

In any case, the maps are below. Click to enlarge.

Cebuano

Cebuano is spoken in various provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao and goes by different names. In Bohol, it's called Boholano and in Leyte it can be called Leyteño, Leytehanon, or Kana. Cebu is basically the de-facto capital of the region and its influence is reflected in the written language, so I guess its dialect gets dibs on being the most famous one. Though I'm all for an inclusive name, but not too inclusive like Visayan.

I had a difficult time with the provinces of Surigao Norte, Surigao Sur, and the newly-created Dinagat Islands. There are four main dialects of Surigaonon spoken there, and they have a lot of Cebuano influence. People have claimed that Cebuano is spoken there, but I can't ascertain it. I don't doubt that Cebuano is spoken there, so for now I have put it in light blue coloring. I am not comfortable with this designation, so I need to research this more.



Kapampangan

Doing Kapampangan was more simple. The majority of Kapampangans are concentrated in Pampanga. However, linguistic borders do not always represent political ones. Southern Tarlac is Kapampangan-dominated, and there are communities of Kapampangan-speakers in southwestern Nueva Ecija, northeastern Bataan, and western Bulacan.



Tagalog

Tagalog was easier as well. Looking at the map, it makes you wonder how a language that's relegated to a smaller area could be the national language of the country for decades. With that aside, I have some doubts about Mindoro. I have conflicting information about where exactly Tagalog is spoken. It appears the interior is dominated by Mangyan languages, but are they mingling with Tagalog speakers? Or do they themselves speak Tagalog? Also, the southern ends of Mindoro are home to Visayan-speakers.

People may argue that this map should cover ALL of the Philippines since over 96% of the population speaks it. But I felt the map would be more useful and more accurate if it showed the areas where Tagalog is native.



Visayan languages

I am quite proud of this map. I've been wanting to do this map for the longest time. It challenges the popular notion of what a Visayan is and what they speak. As you can see, Visayan languages are native to the southern end of Luzon (however, the people there consider themselves Bicolanos) all the way to Jolo (the people there do not consider themselves Visayans either).

One problem that I had with this map was related to Cebuano. For now it's been classified in its own subbranch of Visayan languages. But I feel that it's a South Visayan language just like Tausug, Surigaonon, and Butuanon are. But I can't impose my hypotheses on Wikipedia, so I have to go with current research.



On a side note, I suggested to another Wikipedian that we should do a Venn diagram on what a Visayan is. Since there are geographic, linguistic, ethnic, and political perspectives.

For example:

• A Cebuano is a Visayan under all those criteria.
• A native of Cagayan de Oro is a Visayan but not geographically and politically.
• A Tausug and a Sorsoganon is only Visayan in terms of language. As a matter of fact, in Tausug, "Bisaya" means "Christian."
• An Abaknon from Capul Island is only politically, geographically, and perhaps ethnically Visayan but not linguistic; their language is Sama-Bajaw (related to the languages near Jolo).
• And since 2005, Palawanons are now politically Visayan!

Mentioned in YES!

A Wikipedian living in Manila informed me that I was quoted in the March 2007 issue of YES! Magazine concerning the use of the word Pinoy. Luckily, my grandma buys an issue for herself at the local Filipino store every month, so I went to her house after she told me that she did have a copy.

In any case, I made a scan of the article in question. Click to enlarge. Mr. Lacaba apparently used this post where I mentioned my debate between Guillermo R. Gómez and his son Guillermo O. Gómez concerning the origin of Pinoy.



So yeah, it's kind of exciting and weird at the same time that my blog has been getting this attention lately! And I thought that people in general believe that Philippine languages weren't interesting. ;-)

Baybayin & Coca Cola

I made this partly out of a fit of boredom as well as a picture made by online friend Viktoro Medrano.

The English version of the Coca Cola thing says "Enjoy Coca-Cola" but I decided to use the French & German version which say "Drink Coca-Cola."

So, it says "uminom ng Kuka-Kula."

After many failed attempts doing it by hand (I suck at computer graphic design, apparently), I used Paul Morrow's stylized Tagalog Baybayin font.

Yami

I do know that the description of this blog is dedicated to the "the over 160 languages in the Republic of the Philippines." However, there is a language that is worth mentioning. It is part of the Philippine language family, and is particularly close to Ivatan and Itbayat of Batanes. This language is called Yami and it is spoken in Taiwan.

Taiwan is not only home to Chinese language such as Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Hakka but it is also home to Austronesian languages such as Atayal, Paiwan, Tsou, Rukai, Ami, and others. Yami is the only Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan that is considered part of the vast Malayo-Polynesian subfamily that includes languages as far west as Malagasy and as far east as Hawaiian and Rapa Nui.

Yami, Ivatan, and Itbayat belong to the Bashiic-Central Luzon-Northern Mindoro (henceforth, BCN) subfamily of the Northern Philippine branch. The most famous BCN language is one of the 12 most spoken languages in the Philippines, Kapampangan. The position of Kapampangan in this category is still pretty much shaky, but that's a whole other blog entry.

In any case, I have encountered a very interesting website dedicated to the Yami language. The URL is: http://www.uga.edu/~asian-lp/jpn_html/yami/content.html

Knowing that Yami is related to the languages of the Batanes Islands, I wondered if it was mutually intelligible with them. The third chapter, The Common Origin of Bashiic cultures answered that for me. Apparently if the speakers try speaking their respective languages without foreign borrowings then their mutual intelligiblity is highly increased. For an Ivatan, this meant avoiding Spanish, English, & Tagalog words and a Yami had to avoid using Chinese & Japanese words.

I found the following passage, under "intercomprehension", particularly fascinating:

... In 1986 I succeeded in taking along a Yami friend named Si-Mogaz (male, 39), when I traveled from Irala to Ivatan and to Itbayat. My main curiosity was to see how well, after several hundreds of years of isolation, they could communicate with each other. Now we had living people at hand with a strong desire to communicate, which made the testing of mutual comprehension very different from the previous attempts with the recordings. The results showed themselves within the first hours of conversation. Si-Mogaz felt uncomfortable with the negative form of the Ivatan verb and was somewhat discouraged by the Spanish and English loanwords. As the hours passed, however, his conversation became more self-confident and a few very clear communication behavior patterns started surfacing. Both sides had realized by then that Spanish, English, and Tagalog loanwords on the one side, or Chinese and Japanese loanwords on the other, did not work, so they started eliminating them by looking for synonyms in their own languages. This spontaneous, instinctive response caused an unusual feeling of excitement for the conversants, as if they had understood subconsciously that they were making efforts to reconstruct the language of their common ancestors. Almost every time they succeeded in finding a proper synonym for a native word or bypassed an acculturated element of their contemporary vocabulary by finding a commonly understood synonym, they had to pause to express their excitement by saying: "we are relatives indeed," or "we surely have common origin." In the case of those Spanish words for which there were no Ivatan synonyms, or which were so strongly embedded in usage that the Ivatans could not work their way around them, to my greatest amazement Si-Mogaz started picking them up. At the end of the day he was using correctly the word siguro, which comes from the Spanish "sure." In Ivatanen it is used for "perhaps" and there is no exact Yami equivalent for it. ...

Very cool. Please be sure to read the transcriptions of two stories in Yami to get a feel for the language and to see similarities with other Philippine languages; Nikapowan no tawo do yayo (The creation myth of Yayo) and Nikapowan no tawo do tawo d'Iranmilek (The Creation Myth of Iranmilek). The list of Yami vocabulary is worth visiting as well.

The site also includes an extremely brief grammar & phonology. There are phonemes that are not prevalent in other Philippine languages such as a uvular stop found in Arabic and retroflex stops. On Dr. Rubino's page, you can read a brief description of Ivatan grammar.

And below is a map of the Bashiic area. Click it to enlarge. Enjoy!

My Tausug Book

As many of you know, I wrote a book about the Tausug language titled In Bahasa Sug: An Introduction to Tausug. It's been published by my friend Jason Lobel who is currently in the Philippines. The book is done and I should be getting it when he returns to the USA in September. I have not seen the final product yet, and I am very anxious to see.

So it's kind of a tease (grin) when Sonny Villafania wrote to me saying that Jason showed him my book when they met Dr. David Zorc at De La Salle University in Manila. heh. heh. Then last night, Dr. Carl Rubino e-mails me saying that Dr. Zorc, who returned to the Washington D.C. area, showed him a copy of my book. So a copy of my book is across the country (I'm in the "other" and "greener" Washington. hehe.). Wow!

I think that I - the book's author - will be the last person to see it. I'll bet that even my mother will see it before I do. haha. That's ok. This is totally worth the wait.

Anyway, you can see the front & back cover of the book below. Click to see an enlarged photo.



The book will be in hardcover and paperback. There is a very limited supply of hardcover versions (20 or so) and much more of paperback. I have not determined the prices yet and I will make an announcement sometime after I receive the books.

If you're interested, please e-mail me and I will put you on my list which is short right now.

Dr. Rubino asked me if I'll be doing more books on other Philippine languages.

In a word?

Definitely.

Miscellany

This blog is now listed on Tanikalang Ginto. I've been visiting that site for 9 years now. Check them out!

I've also added an icon to the blog. if you're not familiar with it, it's in Baybayin and the word is "salita." Baybayin is the syllabic script that Filipino ethnic groups used before the arrival of the Spaniards. The script is no longer used except by Hanunoos & Tagbanwas on Mindoro Island.

You may find more information about Baybayin in the links below:

A Philippine Leaf by Hector Santos. This site was the first to introduce me to Baybayin 9 years ago. Beforehand, I had no idea it existed.

Sarisari, etc. by Paul Morrow. An excellent site which talks about Baybayin. Paul is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

And you can also read Omniglot's entries about Baybayin as used by Tagalogs, Tagbanwas, and Hanunoos.

Also, I've added some links on the right margin of this blog. They're links worth checking out.

Book Review: Intermediate Ilokano by Precy Espiritu

Twenty years ago, the University of Hawai'i Press published Let's Speak Ilokano. It was authored by Precy Espiritu, then a Ph.D. student studying applied linguistics at UCLA. At almost 300 pages, this book does a rather decent job in teaching the basics of the Ilokano language, so I recommend her book highly.

For the past year, I've been impatiently anticipating the arrival of Intermediate Ilokano; the sequel of the book published in 1984. In finally received it a couple of weeks ago and have been reading it ever since. What can I say? Dr. Espiritu has really outdone herself.

The book is much larger; there are over 400 pages and it's about an inch wider than its predecessor. Not to mention that there's also an eye-catching cover. Espiritu has employed illustrator Junix Jimenez to breathe life into the book with his delightful illustrations depicting life in the Ilocos Region.

As for the content of the book itself, Espiritu discards the use of dialogs in favor of short stories. Each of the stories has a morale illustrating Philippine or Ilokano values. They are further explained in the cultural notes section at the end of each of the twelve lessons. There are also activities based on the new vocabulary and grammatical concepts introduced in the short stories. What I like is that the grammatical concepts are easily accessible via their own table of contents, right after the main table of contents in the beginning of the book.

Although there are many activities geared toward Ilokano learners in a classroom setting (Ilokano is taught as a class at the post-secondary level in Hawai'i, something not done in the Philippines!), a person learning via self-study can still benefit from the exercises.

There are some minor things which concerns me somewhat. In written Ilokano, pronouns are usually attached to the preceding work to make one new word. For example, in Tagalog there is the phrase nag-aral ako 'I studied'. The Ilokano equivalent would not be written as nagadal ak but nagadalak.

Perhaps it's this way since the pronouns ko 'my' & mo 'your' are reduced to k and m if the preceding words ends in a vowel. For example asawa ko 'my spouse' and libro mo 'your book' become asawak and librom. You gotta admit that asawa k and libro m look pretty darn silly.

[Addendum: July 25, 2004]: Carl Rubino chimed in saying that another reason for this is that ak is pronounced as part of the word; [na.ga.da.lak] rather than Tagalog's [nag.?a.ral.?a.ko].

This can make things rather confusing for an Ilokano learner since it's sometimes difficult identifying a pronoun in a word. Espiritu is evidently aware of this and to combat this she italicizes the pronouns.

The following is from the first two paragraphs of the first story in the book on page 2:

Maysa nga aldaw, inayaban ti maysa a baket dagiti lima a kaarrubana, ket sinaludsodna, "Sinno ti mayat nga agdalus iti lugartayo?"

"Ay, dispensarem, Ina. Saan a siak, ta adu ti trabahok," kinuna ti umuna a simmungbat.

One day, an old lady called her five neighbors, and she asked, "Who wants to clean up our place?"

"Oh, (you) forgive me, Ma'am. I can't, because my work is many," said the first one who answered.

I wonder, though, if it has a place in a book for intermediate learners. It would have been definitely useful in Espiritu's first book. I also wish she would have included diacritic markers indicating stress like she did in the first one, too. However, they are marked in the glossary section but in bold. Even something of greater use would have been an audio CD to practice aural comprehension.

But like I said, these are minor and do not in any manner affect the quality of this book. All in all this is a great book in building up proficiency in Ilokano. All the grammatical concepts are explained in a straightforward manner with accompanying examples. Though, I admit that perhaps the calls for cultural discussions are somewhat unnecessary.

Serious learners of Ilokano should not be without Espiritu's two books as well as Dr. Carl Rubino's masterpiece, his indispensable Ilocano Dictionary and Grammar which is also available from the University of Hawai'i Press. My review for Dr. Rubino's book is on that Amazon.Com page, too.

Now, if only other Philippine languages had quality learning materials such as those I mentioned above.

External link: Dr. Precy Espiritu's Home Page