Ilocano
Ilocano, also
Iloko and
Ilokano, refers to the language and culture associated with the Ilocano people, the third largest ethnic group in the
Philippines. The native area of the Ilocano are in northwestern
Luzon and is the defining identity for the
Ilocos Region
People and History
Ilocanos are of Malay stock, descendants of Southeast Asian migrants that settled the Philippines in successive waves for centuries. Families and clans came by viray or bilog, meaning boat. The term Ilocano come from i-, meaning "from", and looc, meaning "cove or bay", thus "people of the bay." Ilocanos also refer to themselves as Samtoy, a contraction from the Ilocano phrase saö mi ditoy, meaning "our language here".
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 to survival. It also induced Ilocanos 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 and parts of
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 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 Ilocano families moved 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. In Hawaii, Ilocanos make up to eighty percent of the Filipino population, where it is now the top language in demand for
ESL teachers.
A large, growing number of Ilocanos can also be found in the
Middle East,
Hong Kong,
Japan,
Canada and
Europe.
Literature, Culture and the Arts
Pre-colonial Ilocanos of all classes wrote in a syllabic system prior to European arrival. Similar to the Tagalog and
Pangasinan scripts, it was the first to designate coda consonants with a diacritic mark - a cross verama, shown in the
Doctrina Cristiana of 1621, one of the earliest surviving Ilocano publications.
Ilocano culture revolves around life rituals, festivities and oral history. These were celebrated in songs, dances, poems, riddles, proverbs, literary verbal jousts called
bucanegan and epic stories.
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 Ilocano society; it is a hero’s journey steeped in courage, loyalty, pragmatism, honor, and ancestral and familial bonds.
Its animistic past offers a rich background in Ilocano folklore, mythology and superstition (see
Religion in the Philippines). There are many stories of good and malevolent spirits and beings. Its creation mythology centers around the giants Aran and her husband Angngalo, and the powerful Cabunian the Creator.
Music and dance are often accompanied by its local instruments – percussive drums and gongs, bamboo flutes and versions of the stringed lyre and guitar. Songs of love and rejection are key themes. There is also a tradition of dirges or
dung-aw, chanted or wailed in funeral wakes lamenting the passing of the dead.
The colonial and modern era produced prominent artists: painter
Juan Luna, poet Leona Florentino and her writer and activist son Isabelo de los Reyes, and writers Carlos Bulosan and F. Sionil Jose.
In the area of food, Ilocano cuisine is simple, using ingredients available from the immediate environment. Grown from the backyard or plucked from a branch or the river, most are cooked into stews and soups. The diet is very healthy with a preponderance of and a preference for fish, seafood and vegetables.
Pinacbet (from the Ilocano word meaning “to shrink”) is a popular stew of eggplants,
bittermelon,
okra and
buggoong (salted and fermented fish paste). For special occasions, pigs and goats are the meats of choice. Rice is the staple and is used in a myriad of desserts.
Language
Ilocano or Iloko (ISO 639 ilo) is a Western
Austronesian language spoken in Northern
Luzon and in various parts of the country and around the world. It comprises its own branch in the Philippine Cordilleran family of languages. A lingua franca of the northern region, it is spoken as a secondary language by other groups such as the
Pangasinan, Ibanags, Ivatans and the various ethnic tribes of the
Mountain Province and
Zambales. It is spoken by about nine million people.
Ilocano has two dialects: Northern "deeper" Ilocano and Southern Ilocano.
The difference between these two dialects are merely regional variations in lexicon and intonation. The southern speech, in addition, uses six vowels instead of the usual
a, e, i, o, u sounds that the northern dialect employs (using Spanish orthography). Southern Ilocanos (e.g. those from La Union and Pangasinan) has two distinct sounds for the vowel
e, a frontal easy "e" like in "men" for many words in Spanish and English, and an unrounded "uh" sound for native words.
For example, the word for "yes" is
wen. Northern speech would pronounce it as
wεn which rhymes with "men" while Southern speech would pronounce it as
wuhn.
Ilocano employs a predicate-initial structure and 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. Ilocano also has five sets of pronouns.
Example: Root word for bath is
digos.
Agdigos (to take a bath)\n Agdigdigos (bathing)\n Agdigdigosak (I am bathing)\n Agindidigosak (I am pretending to bath)\n Nagdigosak (I bathed)
Pronouns
There are five sets of pronouns in Ilocano. The following table lists what are categorized as independent pronouns. The ones listed in italics are dialectal variants.
\n | \nSingular | \nPlural | \n
\n| 1st Person | \nsiak (I) | \ndata or sita (you and I) |
\n | \n | \ndakami or sikami (we, but not you) |
\n | \n | \ndatayo or sitayo (we, and you) |
\n| 2nd Person | \nsika (you, informal) | \ndakayo or sikayo (you) |
\n | \ndakayo or sikayo (you, formal) | \n |
\n | \nisuda (you, most formal) | \n |
\n| 3rd Person | \nisu(na) (he, she, it) | \nisuda (they) | \n
\n
Borrowings
Ilocano's vocabulary has a closer affinity to languages from Borneo. Foreign accretion comes largely from
Spanish, followed by
English and smatterings of
Hokkien (
Min Nan),
Arabic and
Sanskrit.
Example:
Word Source Ilocano meaning
arak Arabic (wine) generic alcoholic drink\n karma Sanskrit (see Buddhism) spirit\n sanglay Hokkien (to deliver goods) to deliver/Chinese merchant\n agbuldoser English (bulldozer) to bulldoze\n cuarta Spanish (copper coin) money
Common expressions
\n Yes Wen\n No Saän (haän is a southern variation as "h" is not commonly used in Ilocano)\n How are you? Comosta?\n Good day Naimbag nga aldaw\n Good morning Naimbag nga bigat\n Good afternoon Naimbag nga malem\n Good evening Naimbag nga rabiï\n What is your name? Ania ti naganmo? (often contracted to Ania't naganmo)\n Where's the bathroom? Ayanna didiay baño?\n I love you Ayayatenka \n Sorry Pacawan\n Goodbye Sige or Innakon (I'm going)
Numbers (Bilang), Days, Months
\n 0 ibbong OR sero (English zero) OR iclog (Ilocano slang, "egg")\n 0.25 (1/4) cacapat\n 0.50 (1/2) cagudua\n 1 maysa\n 2 dua\n 3 tallo\n 4 uppat\n 5 lima\n 6 innem\n 7 pito\n 8 walo\n 9 siam\n 10 sangapulo\n 11 sangapulot-maysa\n 20 duapulo\n 50 limapulo\n 100 sangagasut\n 1000 sangaribo\n 1000000 sangariwriw\n 1000000000 sangabilion (English, billion)
Days and months are in Spanish:
Monday lunes\n Tuesday martes\n Wednesday miercoles\n Thursday hueves\n Friday viernes\n Saturday sabado\n Sunday domingo
January enero July hulio\n February pebrero August agosto\n March marso September septiembre\n April abril October octobre\n May mayo November nobiembre\n June hunio December desiembre
second segundo\n minute daras OR minuto\n day aldaw\n week lawas OR domingo \n month bulan\n year tawen
To mention time, Ilocanos use a mixture of Spanish and Ilocano:
- 1:00 a.m. A la una ti bigat (One in the morning)\n: 2:30 p.m. A las dos-imedia ti malem (in Spanish, Son las dos y media de la tarde or "half past two in the afternoon")
Noted Personalities
- Gregorio Aglipay\n:José Burgos\n:Leona Florentino\n:F. Sionil Jose\n:Antonio Luna\n:Juan Luna\n:Ferdinand Marcos\n:Elpidio Quirino\n:Fidel Ramos\n:Diego Silang\n:Gabriela Silang\n:Jose Maria Sison
Related Articles
External Link
Category:Malayo-Polynesian languages\nCategory:Languages of the Philippines
