Talk:Languages of the Philippines

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/Archive1 - Sep 16-17, 2004 (text related to possible copyright violation)

Contents

1 Changes - Visayan & Bikol 2 Names of Languages 3 Debate on the History of the Spanish language in the Philippines 4 Chabacano vs. Chavacano 5 Spanish in the Philippines 6 Spanish 7 Most spoken 8 Name of the Malay language 9 Kinaray-a

Changes - Visayan & Bikol

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to address this. I noticed that Visayan redirected to Cebuano language, so I changed it to redirect to a new Visayan languages article I made, which needs to be expanded upon. But it's a start. I did the same for Bisaya and Binisaya.

I also renamed the Bicolano page as Bikol language. I also changed this on the pages that linked to Bicolano.

The Philippine language articles need a lot of fixing, and I'll get around to doing them in my spare time. If anyone's curious, I've been studying Philippine languages for several years and I could consult linguists specializing in Philippine languages in case I don't have the answer. So if you have a question concerning Philippine languages, feel free to reach me on my talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Christopher_Sundita).

--Chris 21:59, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Names of Languages

I fixed the names of the languages and added 4 more in the paragraph that talks about the 8 major languages of the islands.

Changes I made:

Tagalog, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan were fine the way they are. There is a tendancy to call Kapampangan Pampango and Pangasinan Panggalatok or Pangasinense, but they aren't used much in linguistics papers regarding Philippine languages.

Visayan I had to change to Cebuano. There are about three dozen languages whom their respective native speakers refer to as Bisaya or Binisaya (with the exceptions of the Tausugs who reject the term for cultural & religious reasons) despite being mutual unintelligible. So you have a person from Banton Island in Romblon province who speaks Asi and a speaker from Butuan who speaks Butuanon, they can't understand each other's languages but yet to them their language is Bisaya!

Furthermore, I removed the dialectal references. Those can be saved for the languages' individual articles. Some were incorrect such as Masbateño, which is not a dialect of Cebuano at all but a language related to Hiligaynon and Bikol.

Ilonggo has been changed to Hiligaynon since the former refers only to the people in Iloilo. Hiligaynon is spoken outside of Iloilo and as such is more inclusive and unambiguous.

I removed Ilongot it's hardly one of the 8 major languages of the Philippines. Neither is it one of the 12 major ones or the 20 major ones. There are only 21,800 speakers according to the Mother Tongue Statistics of the 2000 Philippine Census.

I'm a good friend of respected linguist who works with the languages of the Bicol region. According to him (Jason Lobel), Bicolano or Bikolano is reserved for the people of the Bicol region. Though some people may incorrectly or alternatively refer to the languages of Bicol as such. The speakers themselves use Bikol to refer to the language.

I added Maranao, Maguindanao, Kinaray-a, and Tausug since they have more then one million native speakers. The original basis, from my understanding, for the 8 major "dialects" of the Philippines was because they all had at least one million speakers. But with the arrival of the 2000 census statistics, the number has changed to twelve. I wrote about this subject at my blog (http://salitablog.blogspot.com). The pertinent entry is "Eight Languages No More" (http://salitablog.blogspot.com/2004/07/eight-major-languages-no-more.html).

--Chris 22:09, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just so it's in writing, I changed Pangasinense to Pangasinan for three reasons. (1) Pangasinense, from my experience, is more often used to refer to an inhabitant of Pangasinan or a speaker of the language than the language itself, as in Aringay, La Union. (2) From what I understand, in the province of Pangasinan, the term Pangasinense is virtually never used to refer to the language. (3) Pangasinan is the name used in all major books on the Pangasinan language I could find. The most complete works on the Pangasinan language were written by Richard Benton in the early 70s, and his books are entitled Spoken Pangasinan, Pangasinan Reference Grammar, and Pangasinan Dictionary.

Lastly, while the language is sometimes referred to as Panggalato or Panggalatok, I don't think they are appropriate as some webpages (http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/Tagalog_Default_files/Philippine_Culture/Regional%20Cultures/pangasinense/pangasinans.htm) on Pangasinan claim that these terms can be construed as pejorative.

--Senor fjord 02:31, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that you did that earlier. Thank you or Salamat ed sikayo. In any case, my observations concerning the name coincides with yours. I've also noticed that Pangasinense writer Sonny Villafania uses Pangasinan to refer to his language as well. Taga iner kayo ed Pangasinan? Assuming, that you are indeed from Pangasinan.

--Chris 06:19, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm actually in Urbana-Champaign, IL in the US. My wife grew up in Mangaldan, Pangasinan, and I'm trying (with great difficulty =) ) to learn her native language. I'd love to write more about the structure of the language on the page, but the language was passed down to her orally.

--Senor fjord 02:27, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Debate on the History of the Spanish language in the Philippines

Note: The original contents were transferred to Talk:Spanish in the Philippines--Jondel 05:50, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Chabacano vs. Chavacano

Suggestion: The Chavacano keeps getting changed to Chabacano then back again(about 8 times already). Why not take a poll or vote for the preferred?--Jondel 23:56, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My personal preference is Chavacano. Using 'v' seems to be correct in both Spanish and English. --seav 16:13, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I also prefer Chavacano especially for the English language. --Jondel 23:26, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Google has 2,440 hits for Chavacano and 8,860 for Chabacano. I prefer Chabacano because the original word in Spanish, Chavacano, has negative connotations. In a recent blog entry, I usually used Chabacano. --Chris 09:01, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The question is, what is the name of the language called in English in an academic context? --seav 13:07, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chabacano's technical name is Philippine Creole Spanish. And there seems to be a kind of naming pattern for creoles. For example the "pidgin" of Hawai'i is called Hawaiian Creole English and the "Kwéyol" of Haiti is called Haitian Creole French.

I should point out that linguist Howard McKaughan of University Hawai'i Manoa published a book called Notes on Chabacano Grammar back in 1954. There is also a dictionary published in Zamboanga which has the word Chabacano on the title. Furthermore, webpostings by Chabacanos prefer to write their language with a b and the /v/ sound does not exist in Chabacano - neither in Spanish. --Chris 17:56, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I guess it has to be Chabacano then. --seav 08:55, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Spanish in the Philippines

Considering its size, I am planning to create or would like to invite anyone to create a separate wikipage, and transfer not only the the languge but also the related discussion/talk page on Spanish/history. I might be doing this very soon, if no one objects or no one else creates the page. A brief description on Spanish in the Philippines will be left behind.--Jondel 03:33, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I pass on the invitation to create the page for now since there is work that needs to be done on the existing articles for Philippine languages. However, I'd welcome an article on Spanish in the Philippines. It will shed some light on the subject. And perhaps I can contribute my two cents worth on the subject in the future.

--Chris 06:23, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your contributions would be highly appreciated. The page has just been created. A summary was left behind.--Jondel 02:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Spanish

I would like to migrate pertinent discussions on Spanish to the Spanish in the Philippines if it is ok with everyone. --Jondel 02:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Discussions were transferred to Talk:Spanish in the Philippines.--Jondel 05:52, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most spoken

From the article, I gather that Tagalog is and was the most spoken language and ther eare more Spanish words in Visayan than in Tagalog. From what I read elsewhere, Tagalog was not the most spoken language during the colony but since the Tagalog were the most Hispanicized / illustrated after the colony, Tagalog was the basis for a common Filipino identity and language. Am I right? -- Error 23:19, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It was not until the 1980's that native Tagalog speakers surpassed native Cebuano speakers. Both speakers hovered around 24% with Cebuano speakers having a slight lead.

There were a variety of reasons why Tagalog was chosen. One was the erroneous view that the Visayan language (sic) was not fragmented into dialects. It's erroneous because they were actually different languages, and Cebuano was the most spoken out of that group. Another was Tagalog's history, and that appears to be true. Another was the importance of Manila, were Tagalog is spoken.

As for Spanish words, there are Spanish words in Visayan languages that are not used in Tagalog and vice-versa. I've never seen a study before but I have the impression that the gap between the amount of Spanish words each has is really insignificant.

--Chris 05:09, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Name of the Malay language

Isn't there another name besides Malay which we could use to refer to the common ancestral language of Tagalog and Bahasa? Use of the term 'Malay' might imply that Philippine languages are descended from some archaic form of Bahasa Melayu. Like as in this paragraph from the article:

When the Spanish had first arrived in the Philippines in the 16th Century, Malay was already the official spoken language of the aristocracy and was also used as a lingua-franca.

The heading, “Malay” doubles up as a link to the “Malay language” article, but the sentence quoted above uses another definition of the same term (that which states “Malay” was the common ancestral language of the peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia). Of course we all know that Bahasa Melayu (to whose article the heading points to) was never once the official language of the aristocracy.

Kinaray-a

I was finally able to get the Western Visayas census (2000) from [[1] (http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2003/pr0304tx.html)]. The number of Kinaray-a speakers is less than 700,000 so I took it out as a language with more than 1 million speakers. Unless there are results to the contrary, I believe there aren't more than 300,000 Kinaray-a speakers in all other regions combined. The census might be inaccurate (as there have been several problems with their results). However, most references I found seems to indicate that Kinaray-a, which is spoken mainly in Antique and parts of Iloilo, do not have more than a million speakers. --Wng

The source you gave states that there are only 126,821 Kinaray-a speakers. That's only a fraction of the complete mother tongue statistics from 2000 that I have. In the source I have, Kinaray-a is fragmented among three names. In the whole country, there are:

• 377,515 Karay-as
• 224,396 Kiniray-as [sic]
• 450,057 Hamitkanons ... Hamtik is another name for Antique province.

Furthermore, this figure may represent an undercount. Please see this post by Jason Lobel (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DILA-philippines/message/3576). Jason is a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and is currently in the Philippines doing research on the Central Philippine languages. In this particular post, he took the census data and added the number of the Kinaray-a towns. These are towns known to him either by his visits to Antique province as well as research by other linguists. --Chris 00:27, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS: Here are other relevant posts: [2] (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DILA-philippines/message/3561) and [3] (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DILA-philippines/message/3564).

Thanks for the info. Anyhow, the 126,821 was actually number of households. I figured there's no way the average household size is more than 7 so it will reach a million. However, there's the problem of having them listed under different names. The provincial results have the population count per language. I might have missed adding Karay-a, but this will mean that the total will be close to 900,000 speakers. Since there are people whose counts are probably more accurate than this census, I will believe those people's counts more than the NSO. The online version does not have breakdown of ethnicity for the whole country, but am even starting to doubt if the provincial counts add up to the national count in the census! -Wng 02:55, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)