Ang Pasko ay Sumapit...

My usual Christmas greetings...

Tagalog: Maligayang Pasko
Cebuano: Maayong Pasko
Ilokano: Naragsak a Paskua
Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Romblomanon, & Masbateño: Malipayon nga Paskwa
Bikol: Maogmang Pasko
Waray-Waray: Maupay nga Pasko
Kapampangan: Masayang Pasku
Pangasinan: Maabig ya Pasko
Akeanon: Maayad-ayad nga Paskwa
Asi: Maadong Paskwa
Onhan: Mayad nga Paskwa
Bolinao: Marigan Nabidad
Boholano: Malipajong Pasko
Philippine English: Meri Krismas :-)
Philippine Spanish: Pelis Nabidad :-)

Hear me speak Kinaray-a!

In the Kinaray-a mailing list, a Ronald Panaligan announced that he's planning to publish a Kinaray-a dictionary. Kinaray-a, just for a reminder, is a West Visayan language spoken in Antique province on the island of Panay. It is one of the 13 most spoken Philippine languages.

Anyway, there was one problem.

How is he going to graphically represent the "schwa" vowel? This vowel is found in many Philippine languages and once existed in virtually all of them.

Many Karay-as usually write the letter "u."

But it's ambiguous with the /u/ sound.

People have proposed û and ö.

I have proposed simply e. That's how it's used in a number of Philippine languages, and the rate of ambiguity is less. For one, the average Joe (or José, in this case) are usually not inclined to write accent marks on words.

Furthermore, in textbooks aimed at teaching Kinaray-a, one cannot indicate stress by placing accent marks on "û" and "ö" since there are already ones. But one can do so with "e." For example, is it pronounced "béket" or "bekét"?

Anyway, there was some discussion on whether or not this sound is similar to Ilokano and Pangasinan. The Karay-as claimed there is a difference. I asked if they could record their voices, but no one stepped up. So I offered to record mine using the same vowel I pronounce Ilokano words with. One of the list members Dixcee promised me her California Golden Balls. Did I win them?

The link is here: http://members.aol.com/linggwistik/private/kinaray-aschwa.wav

I said:

iririmaw tatûn (let's get together)

Bûkût takûn Karay-a (I am not Karay-a)

Ang bûdlay kanatûn nga mga Pinoy, kon diin pa ang gûtûk rudtu pa
tatûn gustu magdasûk. (I have no clue!)

She said I didn't pronounce "tatûn" and "takûn" correctly and it's a draw on the balls. Darn. What the hell are California Golden Balls, anyway?

But yes, now you all have the honor of listening me speak Kinaray-a with quite possibly a heavy Tagalog accent laced in with an American twang here and there.

Whatever Mr. Pinaligan chooses, I will just have to accept. I really would like a Kinaray-a dictionary. :-)

In other news - I am done with summer classes. I did extremely well. I am off from school for the next month. In the fall I will be finishing up the 3rd installment of intermediate French along while exploring philosophy and anthropology. I'm quite excited about the anthropology class.

13 Major Languages And Numbers in Ilokano and Kapampangan

This entry is the third in a series of articles in the first annual Seven-Day Salita Blogathon. For more information, please see this entry.

A little more than a year ago, I wrote an entry titled Eight Major Languages No More. My intention was to update the oft-repeated claim that there are "eight major dialects (sic)" because they are based on at least one million speakers.

With the release of the 2000 Census figures, I found that there were 12 instead of four.

The ball started in 2002 when linguist Jason Lobel added up census figures for towns he knows speaks certain languages. In the end he came up with 12 languages.

I did the same thing when the National Statistics Office released their mother tongue statistics and I myself came up with 12 languages.

But Jason's and my 12 languages did not match. He had forgotten Tausug and I had neglected the Southern Bikol language.

Yes, I did have Bikol in the list. But a fellow member in another mailing list I belong to reminded me by asking me if Bikol was like Visayan - a language group rather than a single language. The answer is yes, but on a smaller scale. There are 4 Bikol languages in contrast with Visayan's 3 dozen.

So, I did a recount of the Bikol speakers.

Northern Bikol (includes the Naga & Legazpi) standards number over 2.1 million.

Southern Bikol has over 1 millino speakers. I compared Northern and Southern Bikol here.

Bisakol (Visayan Bikol), which includes Masbatenyo, has about 850,000 speakers(!).

Northern Catanduanes Bikol has 80,000 speakers.

Total: About 4 million.

The census lists 4.5 million speakers throughout the Philippines, so there are a half-million speakers unaccounted for. The figures I cited above are those who speak it within the Bicol region.

But if I allocate the figures proprotionately (52.5% of 500,000 + 2.1 million), that gives Northern Bikol about 2.4 million speakers. Southern Bikol has 1,125,000.

---

In other news, I explored the number systems again in two Philippine languages; Kapampangan and Ilokano. I looked up grammars that date to the Spanish era. They did count their numbers similar to the way Tagalogs and Warays did.

Page 205 of Diego Bergaño's early-18th century Arte de la lengua Pampanga it mentions that there is adwang pulu for 20 however 21 is mekatlung metung. 31 is mekapat. 91, however, is mecarinalan metung. The rootowrd use is dinalan, meaning 100.

Bergaño admitted that Kapampangans also counted the "Spanish way" - adwang pulu ampun metung instead of mekatlung metung.

Bergaño gave examples of higher, more complex numbers.

387,000 - mekapat walung libu pitung dalan
67,853 - mekapitung libu walung dalan ampon mecanam atlu
425,000 - lawit apat a laksa't mekatlung limang libu
914,257 - lalung siyam a laksa't macapat apat a libu at adwang dalan ampun mekanim pitu

For Ilokano, I refered to page 31 of Francisco López Gramática ilocana

With Ilokano, they started with the teens!

So, rather than saying sangapulo ket maysa for eleven (Tagalog: labing-isa), they said kanikadua pullot maysa. The rootword of kanikadua is dua, which is the number 2.

Some more numbers -

21 - kanikatlo pullot maysa
22 - kanikatlo pullot dua
31 - kanikappat a pullot maysa
41 - kanikalima pullot maysa
51 - kanikannem a pullot maysa
61 - kanikapito pullot maysa
71 - kanikawalo pullot maysa
81 - kanikasiam a pullot maysa
91 - kanikagasut iti maysa
100 - sangagasut
101 - kanikadua gasut iti maysa OR ma
111 - kanikadua gasut iti kanikadua pullot maysa

Interesting stuff! I tried looking for Cebuano & Hiligaynon examples, but there are no resources in the online archives.

Eight Major Languages No More

One of the most frequently-repeated facts about the languages of the Philippines is that there are eight major languages (or if they must, dialects.); Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, Waray-Waray, and Pangasinan. The reason for this, from my understanding, is that each of these languages have at least one million native speakers.

With the release of the mother tongue statistics of the Philippine Census of 2000, four more languages have become members of the "million club." This brings the number up to 12 major Philippine languages.

The twelve major languages of the Philippines are:

1. Tagalog (21,485,927) - central & south Luzon.


2. Cebuano (est. 18,000,000) - central Visayas & northern Mindanao.


3. Ilokano (6,920,760) - northern Luzon


4. Hiligaynon (est. 7,000,000) - western Visayas


5. Bikol (4,583,034) - southeastern Luzon


6. Waray-Waray (est. 3,000,000) - eastern Visayas


7. Kapampangan (2,312,870) - central Luzon


8. Pangasinan (1,362,142) - Pangasinan province


9. Kinaray-a (est. 1,051,968) - western Visayas


10. Maranao (1,035,966) - Mindanao


11. Maguindanao (1,008,424)- Mindanao


12. Tausug (918,069) - Sulu archipelago

If my math is right, the grand total is 68,679,160 who speak one of the twelve major languages out of 76,332,470 Filipinos. That's almost 90% of Filipinos! All the languages above are a much more inclusive representation of the languages of the Philippines, with the addition of three languages spoken either in or near Mindanao.

The census results are not perfect, however. Three of the languages whose numbers I estimated are spoken in the Visayas; Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Waray-Waray. Kinaray-a may as well be in this group. The reason I estimated is that because in the Census, their numbers have decreased. For example, the census in 1995 said that where 14,486,196 Cebuanos (Boholanos included) but in 2000 there were 11,868,028.

This has also happened to Hiligaynon & Waray-Waray which, according to the 2000 census, have suffered losses of 464,339 and 42,443 speakers respectively.

Uh, so just where did these 3,124,950 Visayans go? Short of being abducted by aliens or mass genocide, the answer is in the census. As I've said, the census isn't perfect. Or more accurately, the methods used to calculate the mother tongue statistics aren't perfect.

Filipinos have a tendancy to give different names for their languages. If you have two different people that speak the same language, they might give you different names. The folks at the Philippine Census recognize this and consolidated the numbers where they could. But they didn't catch all of them. For example Kinaray-a was listed as three: Hamtikanon, Karay-a, and Kiniray-a.

In the Visayas, this happens frequently. There is the generic name Bisaya or Binisaya and the local name (and there can be a handful of local names). According to linguist R. David Zorc, there are about three dozen Visayan languages. So it is no surprise that in the census that there are about 5,778,435 "Bisaya/Binisaya" speakers.

I've double checked the percentages with the Philippine yearbook. Cebuano speakers have numbered at about 24% of the population since 1960. Hiligaynon at around 9-10%. And Waray-Waray at about 4-5%. So, my estimations are not too farfetched.

Furthermore, Tagalog is at about 32% according to the census of 2000 but 29.3% in 1995. Quite a leap if you ask me. Perhaps there were those who considered Tagalog their native tongue, even if it isn't.

Also, I have chosen to place Tausug on the list even if it's at 918,069. There are Tausugs in Sabah as well which bring the number over 1 million. It's an important language that's used as a lingua franca in the region.

What are the least-spoken languages? The five least-spoken languages are:

1. Pinangal - spoken by 68. I don't know where this language is spoken. It's not listed on Ethnologue.


2. Karolano - spoken in Negros Island (Visayas) by 71 people. Info here.


3. Malbog - spoken by 197. Again, I don't know where.


4. Tabangnon - spoken by 264 in Quezon Province to Paracale in Camarines Norte. Info about them here.


5. Kabihug - 300 in Camarines Norte. Article here.

Now it's time to wait for the 2005 census....

Alternative pronouns in Kinaray-a, Akeanon, and Onhan

Sometime last year a language named Kinaray-a caught my eye. It's spoken on the island on Panay in the provinces of Antique and Iloilo. The reason it interested me was because it was one of a handful of Central Philippine languages that had the fourth "schwa" vowel in its phonemic inventory. This phoneme, an unrounded back vowel, is prevalent in the languages of Northern Luzon such as Ilokano & Pangasinan, where it's represented by the letter "e". Many Visayan languages just have three; /a/ /i/ and /u/.

In any case, I decided to join a Kinaray-a mailing list to observe the participants use their language. The language certainly "felt" Visayan, but it was quite different from Hiligaynon, another language I've been exposed to which is spoken on Panay. Despite this, it's widely believed that Kinaray-a is a dialect of Hiligaynon or vice-versa even though they both occupy different branches of the Visayan family.

I noticed that they used the letter "u" and to represent the schwa vowel and one member wasn't too fond of my proposal to use "e".

Another thing that caught my eye and heard vaguely about was what I call the T-series pronouns.

Pronouns in Philippine languages are separated into categories. I'll use Tagalog as an example:

Nominative (Absolutive) - ako, ikaw (ka), siya, kami, tayo, kayo, sila
Genitive (Ergative) - ko, mo, niya, namin, natin, ninyo, nila
Oblique - sa akin, sa iyo, sa kaniya, sa amin, sa atin, sa inyo, sa kanila

In Kinaray-a, there are two sets of nominative pronouns. They appear to be based upon the genitive ones. Kinaray-a's pronouns are as follows:

Nominative (Absolutive) #1 - ako, ikaw (kaw), [none], kami, kita, kamo, sanda
Nominative (Absolutive) #2 - taken, timo, tana, tamen, taten, tinyo, tanda
Genitive (Ergative) - ko, mo, na, namen, naten, ninyo, nanda
Oblique - kanaken, kimo, kana, kanamen, kanaten, kaninyo, kananda

I found this rather odd. Even more odd was the fact that there is no 3rd person pronoun in the first series. I guess there is no need for one. In Tagalog, it is usually possible to leave out "siya" in a sentence.

I asked around and received a bunch of native speaker opinions on what the T-series pronouns could be used for. The best one was from Gail. Who said:

If someone told me "iririmaw kita" [let's get together], my knee jerk reaction would be to say, "amo ri-a abi mo" [that's what you delude yourself with]. but if he says "iririmaw tatun" [let's get together], aba okay ako diyan! [I'm ok with that] hehehe.

I concluded that it had to either be some kind of politeness marker or some kind of "softening" marker. I knew that this system existed in Aklanon, another Western Visayan language. So I consulted Dr. R. David Zorc, a fluent Aklanon speaker who is married to a native Aklanon.

An excerpt from his e-mail:

The differences are more pragmatic (i.e., discourse sensitive or oriented) than cultural. One set does not show more or less respect, as opposed to more emphasis, bringing the audience in to the fineries of the discussion or tale. They are limited to informal speech, rarely do they make it to writing, except in folktales where people or animals engage in extended discourse. They take quite a while to appear. For example, if I were telling of a bumpy plane trip to Manila, I would run through all the basic stuff using aku', e.g., umadtu aku sa erport ag naghuEa't aku' it mabu:hay
went - I - to - airport - and -waited - I - quite a while
Once we got up in the air, and the bumpy flight started, the airplane
or the weather could be characterized as:
ma7u'ndag gid 7it'7a:na 'it was very bumpy'
and what was going on in my stomach as:
masaki't gid 7it'7a:kun tyan, tumalig7ab 7a:nay aku', tapus sumukah gid
7it'7a:kun.
'my stomach was really sick, at first I belched, afterwards I just
vomited

And from another e-mail. This really explained things very well for me:

The Kinaray-a uses you describe ARE cultural, and so are some of the Aklanon
uses. ... What I believe is and has been going on is a long process of detopicalization. Object focus constructions allow the speaker to deemphasize himself or to be
deemphasized (gin-baligya7-a'n mo 'Did you sell it?', gin-baligya7'a'n ko 'I sold
it'; gin-Ea'bh-an ko 'I washed it'). In W.Bisayan dialects, the process is taken one step further by using an object-marked set instead of the topic marked set. I once heard Tagalogs say of Peace Corps Volunteers who always used the actor focus that they were "arrogant Americans." The lady's reaction to the IRIRIRMAW KITA smacks of the same thing. In the sick-on-airplane snippet I talked about, once the action gets
going, the actor removes himself from topicalization.

And he's right. In Tagalog, we usually switch from the nominative to the genitive. But in the three Western Visayan languages that I have looked at, there is another option. This, I find fascinating. I'd bet it'd be useful in Tagalog.

I also was told that there is another use for the t-series pronouns. Using two nominative pronouns in a row provides emphasis.

Kinaray-a: Ako taken ang nagabantay kang aken mga bata.
Tagalog: Ako mismo ang nagbabantay ng aking mga bata.
English I, myself, am watching over my children.

And I'll end this long post by showing Akeanon & Onhan's pronoun systems. I am corresponding with a native Onhan speaker about their pronouns. So it may need corrections later. Note that there is a hyphen in the Aklanon forms. It stands for a glottal stop.

Aklanon

Nominative #1 - ako, ikaw (ka), imaw, kami, kita, kamo, sanda
Nominative #2 - t-akon, t-imo, t-ana, t-amon, t-aton, t-inyo, t-anda
Genitive - ko (nakon), mo (nimo), na (nana), namon, ta (naton), ninyo, nanda
Oblique - kakon, kimo, kana, kamon, katon, kinyo, kanda

Onhan

Nominative #1 - ako, ikaw (kaw), imaw, kami, kita, kamo, sanda
Nominative #2 - takon, timo, tana(?), tamon, taton, tinyo, tanda(?)
Genitive - ko (nakon), mo (nimo), na (nana), namon, ta (naton), ninyo, nanda
Oblique - akon, imo, ana, amon, aton, inyo, anda

I discovered Onhan's last night from this site. There are other Western Visayan languages, but I am unsure of them as I don't have resources about them.