| Bantayanon | |
|---|---|
| Binantayanon | |
| Native to | Philippines |
| Region | Bantayan Island,Cebu Province |
Native speakers | 72,000 (2007)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bfx |
| Glottolog | bant1293 |
TheBantayanon language is theregional language of theBantayan islands in thePhilippines. It is a part of theBisayan language family and is closely related toWaray andHiligaynon. There are three dialects of Bantayanon, based in the three municipalities that comprise the island group:Binantayanun (inBantayan),Linawisanun (inMadridejos), andSinantapihanun (inSanta 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.
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 because the latter were populated in more recent times." (translation by editors)[2]
Thesubstratum of Bantayanon is that OldWaray dialect that moved across Bantayan and eventually onto Panay Island, and later Bantayanon was heavily influenced in its lexicon by Cebuano.[3]
The only published scholarship on the Bantayanon language is a Master of Arts thesis presented toMindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) by Minda Carabio-Sexon,[4] 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[as of?] a documentation project of Bantayanon underway by researcher Jarrette K. Allen, a PhD candidate atTulane University inNew Orleans, LA.
Bantayanon has sixteen consonantalphonemes and three vocalic phonemes. The followingorthography is the one currently being developed, since Bantayanon is still considered an undocumented/undescribed language with no literary history. It draws on the orthographies ofCebuano,Hiligaynon, andFilipino, but also diverges in some ways.
| bilabial | dental (apical) | alveolar (apical) | palatal | velar | glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | ||||
| tap/flap | ɾ | ||||||
| fricative | s | h | |||||
| approximant | central | j | w | ||||
| lateral | (w) | l | |||||
All finalplosives in Bantayanon areunreleased. It has not been demonstrated that Bantayanonaspirates any consonants. There are nosyllabic consonants in Bantayanon.
The following phonemes are written as they are in theIPA (above table):p b t d k g m n s h w l.
These phonemes are written as such:
| FRONT | CENTRAL | BACK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HIGH | i | u | |
| LOW | a |
Like Cebuano, Bantayanon has only three vocalic phonemes. There is no/o/ or/e/ in Bantayanon, although many use the letterso ande when writing. All syllables in Bantayanon contain one and only one vowel.