regional language
*
A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area.
Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Lan ...
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
. It is a part of the Bisayan language family and is closely related to Waray and Hiligaynon. There are three dialects of Bantayanon, based in the three municipalities that comprise the island group: ''Binantayanun'' (in Bantayan), ''Linawisanun'' (in Madridejos), and ''Sinantapihanun'' (in Santa Fe), the most idiosyncratic of the three. There are also significant dialectal differences between the speech patterns of those that live in the town centers and those that live outside of the more rural areas of the islands.
History of the Bantayanon language
The first mention of the language spoken on the Bantayan islands seems to be from the Spanish historian and Jesuit missionary Ignacio Alcina, who wrote in 1668,
"Finally, it could have happened that people from various larger or smaller islands passed over to the others, as is an established fact among them. For instance, those on the Island of Bantayan, which is near Cebu, are actually descendants of the people living on Samar Island and on the western side or opposite that of Ibabao. Today, they admit that they are related by blood due to the fact that the latter were populated in more recent times." (translation by editors)
The
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
of Bantayanon is that Old Waray dialect that moved across Bantayan and eventually onto Panay Island, and later Bantayanon was heavily influenced in its lexicon by Cebuano.
Modern scholarship on the Bantayanon language
The only published scholarship on the Bantayanon language is a Master of Arts thesis presented to Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) by Minda Carabio-Sexon,Carabio-Sexon, Minda. 2007. “Bantayanon: A Lexical Comparison and Sociolinguistic Description.” Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology. in which she looks at the lexical relationship between Bantayanon and its neighboring languages, presents findings from mutual-intelligibility tests with related languages, and provides a sociolinguistic profile of the island's inhabitants. She also provides transcriptions and English translations of two of her collected interviews.
There is currently a documentation project of Bantayanon underway by researcher Jarrette K. Allen, a PhD candidate at
Tulane University
Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s and three vocalic phonemes. The following
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
is the one currently being developed, since Bantayanon is still considered an undocumented/undescribed language with no literary history. It draws on the orthographies of Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Filipino, but also diverges in some ways.
All final
plosives
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), li ...
in Bantayanon are unreleased. It has not been demonstrated that Bantayanon aspirates any consonants. There are no
syllabic consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
s in Bantayanon.
The following phonemes are written as they are in the
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners A ...
(above table): p b t d k g m n s h w l.
These phonemes are written as such:
* If a root in Bantayanon does not begin with another consonant, it begins with a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
/ɂ/, but this glottal is only ever indicated in the orthography when that glottal appears word-medially due to
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
ation or
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
.
* The glottal stop is written as a hyphen (-) in all word-medial positions. This is atypical of Central Bisayan languages, which assume a glottal between vowels (i.e. ''aa'' = ). However, it is necessary to write long vowels in Bantayanon, for they are contrastive, and this is done by doubling the vowel (i.e. ''aa'' = ) and marking all word-medial glottals (''a-a'' = ).
* The glottal stop in word-final positions (always over a vowel) is indicated with a
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages usin ...
(e.g. ).
* The
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
is written with ''ng'' and can appear word-initially, medially, and finally.
* The tap or flap is written with an ''r''.
*The glides and are written with a ''w'' and a ''y'', respectively.
Like Cebuano, Bantayanon has only three vocalic phonemes. There is no or in Bantayanon, although many use the letters ''o'' and ''e'' when writing. All syllables in Bantayanon contain one and only one vowel.