Waray Songs & Contractions

Just a quick update.

So I have a collection of songs in Tagalog (of course), Bikol (in the Viracnon & Legazpi dialects), Cebuano, Ilokano, Pangasinan, one in Hiligaynon (I think), and now I have a CD in Waray-Waray.

It's called Lubi-Lubi & Other Waray Folksongs.

Brackets indicate where I fixed the spelling, where known.

There are 12 songs: Lubi-Lubi, An I[r]oy nga Tuna, Daw Nasusunod, Kon Harapit na An Adlaw Matunod, Di Ak Nahuhulop, An Bulan, An Lubi, [Ginhilom] Ko, Lawiswis Kawayan, [An] Mga Hoyohoy, Limukon ug Punay, and Daw Sugad Hin Bukad.

The singers are the Mabuhay Singers. So it has that familiar traditional feeling.

One day I'd like to see pop songs in minority Philippine languages. I understand there is Cebuano rap!

And something linguistic related. I noticed one of the titles is Di Ak Nahuhulop (I am not discouraged). Until fairly recently (say, last year or so), I always associated the di ak part with Ilokano, which is written diak. So when I first bought the CD today, I was wondering why there was an Ilokano song on it. :-D

Anyway, Waray-Waray usually contracts pronouns.

ako (first person singular, absolutive) becomes ak. And in some cases, usually after a vowel, it's simply k.

kami (first person, exclusive plural, absolutive) becomes kam

kita (first person, includive plural, absolutive) becomes kit

nakon (first person singular, ergative) becomes either nak or ko.

nimo (second person singular, erg.) becomes nim or mo

imo (second person singular, oblique) becomes im

In Tagalog, it happens less frequently, it seems. I personally contract ako to ko following a word that ends in /a/. Cebuano does anywhere regardless. Also ninyo (2nd person plural ergative) is contracted to nyo.

Speaking of Cebuano, I am still sometimes confused by its speakers' contractions. KO could either come from AKO (1st person sg., absolutive) or NAKO (1st person sg., erg.). NAKO from either KANAKO or NAKO. The same with MO/KANIMO/NIMO and other oblique pronouns resembling ergative ones.

That's all for now.

Changes to Ethnologue

SIL has recently made some changes to its Ethnologue. It's now in its 15th edition.

I was curious to see if there were any changes to its page on the languages of the Philippines. The first I noticed is that where were no longer 169 living languages as stated in the 14th edition, but instead there were now 171. And instead of three extinct languages, there were now *gasp* four.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no way of automatically seeing what the changes are, so I had to manually make a comparison between the two versions.

So, here are my findings. Please direct any corrections to me.

Reclassifications

Seven of the existing languages were renamed.

Bontoc, South is now Finallig
Sama, Abaknon is now Inabaknon
Adasen is now Itneg, Adasen
Kalanguya, Keley-i is now Kallahan, Keley-i
Magindanaon is now Maguindanao
Sama, Balangigi is now Balangigi

Extinctions

One language was removed from the living languages portion and moved down to the extinct language. This language is Agta, Villa Viciosa formerly spoken in Abra Province.

Additions

There were three additions.

Itneg, Banao
Itneg, Moyadan
Filipino

Filipino?! I was surprised to see Filipino. If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know that I consider Filipino a dialect of Tagalog. But upon further investigation of the language tree, Filipino has been grouped as a dialect of Tagalog along with the current Tagalog dialects. I don't think that's an accurate way of putting it. Neither do I think Filipino merits its own entry.

On related news, I've ordered some books from SIL-Philippines. One of them is a Masbatenyo dictionary. But it's taking so long for them to arrive. SIL told me they sent it via airmail on March 7th, but it's already May. I hope they didn't get lost or anything. I had to pay extra for airmail shipping so they'd get here quickly instead of 2-6 months.

Until next time...