The language of Babuyan Island (Ibatan) is sometimes classified as a dialect of the Ivatan language. Most of the Babuyan population moved to Batan Island and to Luzon mainland during the Spanish colonial period. The island became repopulated at the end of the 19th century with families from Batan, most of them speakers of one of the Ivatan dialects.[2]
Ivatan speakers are found outside their homeland, many of them settled in mainland Luzon particularly in nearby Cagayan Valley, Ilocandia, Cordillera Administrative Region, Central Luzon, Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Mindoro and Palawan and also settled as far as Mindanao. In Mindanao, a significant Ivatan-speaking minority exist mainly in Bukidnon, Lanao and Cotabato where they settled since the 1950s in search of economic opportunities settled down in government homesteads in these areas. Nowadays, however, their language has becoming endangered among Ivatan settlers' descendants especially newer generations born in Mindanao, due to being accustomed into a society of Cebuano-speaking majority. Like elsewhere, intermarriage between Ivatans and Mindanaoans of various ethnicities are not uncommon. Most of these Ivatans in Mindanao today speak the majority language of Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Tagalog and other Mindanao indigenous languages more than their ancestors' native language in varying fluency or none at all.[3][4][5][6]
Introduction
Ivatan is especially characterized by its words, which mostly have the letter v, as in vakul, Ivatan, and valuga. While related to the Northern Philippine group of languages, Ivatan, having been isolated, is most close to the two other members of the Bashiic sub-group of languages, Yami (Tao) and Itbayat, neither of which is indigenous to Luzon. Ibatan dialect, spoken on the nearby Babuyan group of islands, is so similar to Ivatan that it is not entirely clear whether it should be classified as a dialect of Ivatan or a separate language, though each does receive its own code in ISO taxonomy.
Ivatan has two dialects; Basco Ivatan, more commonly known as Ivasay, spoken on the main island of Batan, and Southern Ivatan or Isamurung, spoken on the southern half of Batan and on the most southern island, Sabtang.[2]
Variations in language
In the capital of Basco and the surrounding northern half of Batan, the area encompassed by Ivasayen, t is prominent, whereas in the Isamurongen zone to the south (Mahatao, Ivana, Uyugan and Sabtang) that phoneme becomes a ch.
Examples of the more visible variations of the Ivasayen and Isamurongen words and pronunciations are:
tiban ('to look') in Basco is chiban in the southern towns
antiyaw ('later') in Basco is anchiyaw in the southern towns
kabatiti ('patola') in Basco is kabachichi in the southern towns
timoy ('rain') in Basco is chimoy in the southern towns
Itbayaten is sometimes also considered a dialect. 2% of the total vocabulary does not occur in Ivatan dialects. Examples of different Ivasayen, Isamurongen and Itbayaten words that have the same English translation:
adkan ('to kiss') in Basco and the southern towns is umahan in Itbayat.
arava ('none') in Basco and the southern towns is aralih in Itbayat.
bago ('pig') in Basco and the southern towns is kuyis in Itbayat.
otioyan ('nest') in Basco is ochoyan in the southern towns and hangtay in Itbayat.
ipes ('tail') in Basco is vochivot in the southern towns and also ipes in Itbayat.
Ivatan and Filipino words are sometimes combined, as in the Ivatan word mapatak. It is derived from marunong (Filipino) and chapatak (Ivatan), literally 'someone who knows', which were then compounded to form the word mapatak. This is the result of the influence of non-Ivatans who tend to speak the language and were then eventually adopted.[citation needed]
Examples of metathesis in Ivatan include iskarayla for iskalayra ('stairs') and tumaraya for tumayara ('going up').
Ivatan slang includes examples such as tanchew, coined from mirwa ta anchiyaw – literally 'we’ll meet again later', and nganmu, coined from jinu ngayan mu, literally 'where are you going'. These are results of shortening Ivatan phrases or sentences into one or two words, depending on usage.
lakasan – tops of wooden trunks used for storing cloth and other valuables which serve as benches
dulang – low dining table
bangku – low bench
rahaung, camarin – a storeroom for larger farm equipment such as plows, harrows, sleds, cards, and the ox-drawn pole used for clearing off sweet potatoes and other vines from fields being prepared for re-cultivation
suut, vakul – a head-and-back covering woven from the stripped leaves of banana or the vuyavuy
alat – baskets
batulinaw – a necklace made of hollow globules (1½ cm. in diameter) interspersed with smaller pieces of gold in floral patterns and held together by a string made of fiber
tamburin – an all-gold necklace whose beads are smaller and more ornate than the batulinaw, and lockets
seseng, pamaaw, chingkakawayan, liyano, de pelo, dima s'bato, pitu s'bato, de perlas, bumbolya, karakol, pinatapatan – traditional earrings that come from the Spanish period
Ivatan is written using the Latin alphabet. As Ivatan is primarily a spoken language and seldom used in written form, there is currently no consistent way of writing the language and different conventions may be used by different writers. An orthography devised for use in public schools by the Department of Education uses the full 26-letter Latin alphabet, with three extra letters, ch, ñ, and ng.[9]
The schwa sound, or uh, is normally represented by the letter e as in Dios Mamajes, 'di-yos-ma-ma-huhs', and palek 'pa-luhk'.[citation needed]
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