Languages and dialects

Note: This piece was first published as my column piece in the Nov. 15, 2002 issue of Northern Dispatch Weekly. It is being reposted here with very minor edits.

THIS IS A FOLLOW-UP on the piece I wrote last week in this column, about Ilocano and other local languages. I would have liked to use “Northern Philippine languages,” not as an off-the-cuff phrase but an exact taxonomic category established through linguistic studies.

IRAIA thoughts
IRAIA thoughts

Some might be surprised of this talk about “Philippine languages,” on the belief that there is only one Philippine language (which many consider to be Pilipino), or just a few languages that may include Ilocano and Cebuano, while all the others are “dialects.”

There is in fact among us a very persistent notion. That is, if a certain variety of speech is not widely accepted and used, then it is a “dialect,” while another speech variety that has become a national or regional standard is called a “language.” One doesn’t have to travel far to hear apologetic comments such as, “Pasensya dagiti saan a makaawat, mas nairwamak gamin nga agsao iti dialect mi nga Ilokano (or Kankanaey-Bontoc, or Kalinga, etc.).”This notion creates a very innacurate picture of the actual language situation in the country and in our region — typically to the detriment of the lesser languages that are unfairly demoted to the category of dialects. For example, is Adasen (spoken in Tineg, Abra and parts of adjacent towns, including Conner in Apayao) a language or a dialect?

The common reply would be, “It’s a dialect.” Or, more probably, “Adasen? What is that? Tineg? Where is that?”

But most Philippine language scholars would say, “Adasen is definitely a language.” And that is because, for most linguists, there is a well-established criteria for distinguishing languages: If two speech varieties are different enough as to be mutually unintelligible, then the two are separate languages. If two speech varieties are somewhat different but still mutually intelligible, then they are dialects of one common language.

Thus, the Summer Institute of Linguistics website has a current count of 54 Northern Luzon languages, among which Ilocano is just one. We add 12 more to include the languages of Batanes and certain areas in Central Luzon, which belong to another branch but are still closely related to the Northern Luzon languages. (I can provide a text list and a digital tree of the said languages, for interested readers.)

Surprised that there are so many languages in Northern Luzon? Actually, we should treat SIL’s language identifications somewhat guardedly, because these are based on field studies that may have given too much prominence–intentionally or not–on very localized sources. Thus, for example, the SIL counts four languages for Ifugao: Amganad, Batad, Mayaoyao, and Tuwali. Or, in the case of Kalinga, the SIL counts eight: Butbut, Limos, lower Tanudan, upper Tanudan, Lubuagan, Mabaka, Madukayang, and Southern Kalinga.

Here is in fact a real problem: even if a language and a dialect are conceptually different based on the degree of “mutual unintelligibility,” in the Cordillera and other parts of Northern Luzon, there is a wide range between full intelligibility and total unintelligibility among local speech varieties.

For example, SIL itself says that Batad Ifugao (aka Ayangan) is mutually intelligible with Mayaoyao Ifugao to the extent of 86-94%. Tuwali Ifugao is 77% mutually intelligible with Amganad Ifugao, and 78% with Batad Ifugao.

In fact, this is the typical language situation in most Cordillera uplands: You move from one village or tribe to the next–say from Mabaka to Banao–and you will sense some language variation, enough to be called dialect differences but not enough to say that Mabaka and Banao are different languages. Mabaka and Banao folk can easily communicate with each other, both using their respective tribes’ native speech.

You move farther, say to Uma, and you encounter more language variations. Move farther south, say to Tulgao, then Butbut, then Betwagan, then Mainit–and soon you will realize that, traveling from the Mabaka speech area to the Mainit speech area, you have crossed not just dialect boundaries but language boundaries.

But try to draw exactly on the map where that boundary is found, and you will be at a loss. In fact, even linguists have to invent arbitrary categories and boundaries, such as the “eight languages of Kalinga,” if only as a first, rough approximation to facilitate more extensive language studies.

I have before me several published sources of general information on Northern Luzon languages: Ethnologue data for Philippine languages, pages from the SIL website, a 1998 Philippine ethnographic map published by an Ateneo-based NGO, another 1998 Philippine ethnographic map published by the NCCP-PACT, and a more or less comprehensive descriptive list of Philippine languages from the UP-CSSP Dept. of Languages. And one thing is strikingly obvious: even these serious works contain so many inaccuracies, uncertainties, and inconsistencies.

If that is the status of ethnolinguistic data today among scholars of Philippine languages, then it isn’t surprising that even the government’s National Statistics Office cannot make an accurate census of what languages are principally spoken by households at the barangay, municipal, and provincial level.

I won’t be surprised, too, if barangay officials, NGO workers, Leftist activists, and even New People’s Army cadres show themselves more knowledgeable about the language variations in their respective areas of jurisdiction. Is any academic institution here in Northern Luzon tapping them to pursue our own language studies, so that we are not so dependent on the SIL?

Let’s hear from our scholars and educators. #

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