Ilokano Language and Culture

Ilocano is an Austronesian language spoken primarily by the Ilocano people in the Philippines.

It is closely related to some of the other Austronesian languages of Northern Luzon, and has slight mutual intelligibility with the Balangao language and the eastern dialects of the Bontoc language.

The Ilokano people had their indigenous writing system and script known as kur-itan.

There have been proposals to revive the kur-itan script by teaching it in Ilokano-majority public and private schools in Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur.

Ilocano is an official provincial language in La Union, the first province in the Philippines to pass an ordinance protecting and revitalizing a native language.

In recent times, there have been two systems in use for writing Ilocano: the modern alphabet, which was introduced in the 20th century, and the Baybayin system, which was used prior to European arrival.

Ilocano is a language spoken in the Philippines

The Ilocano language has a Spanish-based orthography, while the Tagalog language has a phoneme-to-letter correspondence

In the Spanish system, words of Spanish origin kept their spellings, while native words conformed to the Spanish rules of spelling

Most older generations of Ilocanos use the Spanish system

In the Tagalog system, words of native origin are spelled using the phoneme-to-letter correspondence, while words of foreign origin must be changed in spelling to better reflect Ilocano phonology

Literature written in Ilocano is often steeped in traditional values and reflects important aspects of Ilocano culture

Ilocano culture revolves around life rituals, festivities, and oral history, which are celebrated in songs, dances, poems, proverbs, and literary verbal jousts

Ilocano has two dialects, the Amianan (Northern) and the Abagatan (Southern).

The letter e is pronounced differently in the two dialects. In the Amianan (Northern) dialect, there exist only five vowels while the older Abagatan (Southern) dialect employs six.

Reduplicate vowels are not slurred together, but voiced separately with an intervening glottal stop: /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.

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.

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].

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

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.

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/.

Ilokano is a Philippine language that is excluded from [ɾ]-[d] allophony, as /r/ in many cases is derived from a Proto-Austronesian *R; compare bago (Tagalog) and baró (Ilokano) 'new'.

Ilokano has a glottal stop /ʔ/ which is not permissible as coda; it can only occur as onset.

The language marginally has a trill [r] which is spelled as rr, for example, serrek [sɯ.ˈrɯk] 'to enter'.

Trill [r] is sometimes an allophone of [ɾ] in word-initial position, syllable-final, and word-final positions, spelled as single ⟨r⟩, for example, ruar 'outside' [ɾwaɾ] ~ [rwar].

As primary stress can fall only on the penult or the ultima, suffixation causes a shift in stress one syllable to the right.

Ilokano has 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.