An Austronesian language, it is related to such languages as Indonesian, Malay, Fijian, Maori (of New Zealand), Hawaiian, Malagasy (of Madagascar), Samoan, Tahitian, Chamorro (of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), Tetum (of East Timor), and Paiwan (of Taiwan).
Ilocano comprises its own branch in the Philippine Cordilleran family of languages. It is spoken as a native language by eight million people.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
The letter in bold is the graphic (written) representation of the vowel.
|Close||i /i/||e /ɯ/, u/o /u/|
|Mid||e /ɛ/||o /o/|
For a better rendition of vowel distribution, please refer to the IPA Vowel Chart.
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.
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.
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).
Example:kuarta /kwaɾ.ta/ money paria /paɾ.ja/ bitter melon
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].
|Word||Gloss||Origin||Amianan Dialect||Abagatan Dialect|
|/iu/||iw||iliw "home sick"|
|/ei/||ey||idiey "there" (Regional variant. Standard: "idiay")|
|/oi/, /ui/||oy, uy||baboy "pig"|
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.’poi] and baboy (pig) may be pronounced [‘ba.bui].
|Bilabial||Dental / |
|Affricates||Voiceless||(ts, tiV) [tʃ]|
|Nasals||m||n||(niV) [nj]||ng [ŋ]|
|Semivowels||(w, CuV) w||(y, CiV) [j]|
All consonantal phonemes may be the syllable onset or coda. Exceptions are /h/ and /ʔ/. The phoneme /h/ is loaned and rarely occurs in coda position. Although, the Spanish word, reloj, clock, would come into Ilokano as */re.loh/, the final /h/ is dropped resulting in /re.lo/. However, this word 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. 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 oset, the glottal stop disappears in affixation. Take for example the root aramat, use. When prefixed with ag-, the expected form is *ag-aramat /ʔɐg.ʔɐ.ra.mat/. But, the actual form is, in fact, agaramat /ʔɐ.gɐ.ra.mat/; the glottal stop disappears. In a reduplicated form, the glottal stop returns and participates in the template, CVC, agar-aramat /ʔɐ.gar.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 dugo (Tagalog) and dara (Ilokano) blood.
The language 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 as [sɛ.ˈrano]. Some speakers, however, pronounce Serrano as [sɛ.ˈɾano].
Ilokano employs 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.
|Word||Source||Original Meaning||Ilokano meaning|
|arak||Arabic||drink similar to sake||generic alcoholic drink|
|karma||Sanskrit||deed (see Buddhism)||spirit|
|sanglay||Hokkien||to deliver goods||to deliver/Chinese merchant|
|agbuldos||English||to bulldoze||to bulldoze|
|kuarta||Spanish||cuarta ("quarter", a kind of copper coin)||money|
|kumusta||Spanish||greeting: ¿Cómo está? ("How are you?")||how are you|
|No||Saan or Haan|
|How are you?||Kumusta ka?|
|Good day||Naimbag nga aldaw|
|Good morning||Naimbag a bigat|
|Good afternoon||Naimbag a malem|
|Good evening||Naimbag a rabii|
|What is your name?||Ania ti naganmo? (often contracted to Aniat' naganmo?)|
|Where's the bathroom?||Ayanna ti banio?|
|I cannot understand||Diak matarusan|
|I love you||Ay-ayatenka or Ipatpategka|
|Sorry||Pakawan or Dispensar|
|Goodbye||Agpakadaakon or Kastan/Kasta pay (Till then) or Sige (Okay) or Innakon (I'm going)|
|0|| ibbong |
awan (lit. none)
sero (English zero)
itlog (slang egg)
|10||sangapulo (lit. a group of ten)||dies|
|11||sangapulo ket maysa||onse|
|100||sangagasut (lit. a group of one hundred)||sien, siento|
|1,000||sangaribo (lit. a group of one thousand)||mil|
|10,000||sangalaksa (lit. a group of ten thousand)||dies mil|
|1,000,000||sangariwriw (lit. a group of one million)||milion|
|1,000,000,000||sangabilion (American English, billion)||bilion|
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? Beintiuno. How old are you? 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? Sangapulo laeng. How many kilos of rice do you want? Ten only.
Adda dua nga ikan kenkuana. He has two fish. (lit. There are two fish with him.)
dominggo (lit. Sunday)
To mention time, Ilokanos use a mixture of Spanish and Ilokano: