Iraya language

The Iraya language is a language spoken by Mangyans on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. Zorc (1974) places the Iraya language within the North Mangyan group of Malayo-Polynesian languages,Template:Sfn though Lobel (2013) notes that it shows "considerable differences" to Tadyawan and Alangan, the other languages in this group.Template:Sfn There are 6,000 to 8,000 Iraya speakers, and that number is growing. The language status of Iraya is developing, meaning that this language is being put to use in a strong and healthy manner by its speakers, and it also has its own writing system (though not yet completely common nor maintainable).

Ethnologue reports that Iraya is spoken in the following municipalities of northern Mindoro island.

• Mindoro Occidental Province: Paluan, Abra de Ilog, northern Mamburao, and Santa Cruz municipalities
• Mindoro Oriental Province: Puerto Galera and San Teodoro municipalities

Barbian (1977) also lists the location of Calamintao, on the northeastern boundary of Santa Cruz municipality ( up the Pagbahan River from the provincial highway).Template:Sfn

The language is not well documented, though a translation of the Bible is available locally.

Dialects and speech registers

There are different dialects spoken in the North East, North West, and Southwest areas. Some of these dialects are the following:

1. Abra de Ilog
2. Alag Bako
3. Pagbahan
4. Palauan-Calavite
5. Pambuhan

Basic vocabulary and grammar is shared across the dialects. Besides differences in pronunciation, the dialects differ in their preferred usage of words and expressions from the general Iraya vocabulary stock. Furthermore, there are regional borrowings from adjacent languages. Iraya from the lowland, living between the foothills and the plains, adopted some words from Tagalog. Iraya living in the foothills, or on the lower slopes of Ht. Halcon, adopted words from the closely related Alangan language.

Besides a generally used colloquial register called , Iraya knows a quasi-liturgical speech register known as . This type of speech is used in power songs used by shamans of Occidental Mindoro. is only understood by Shamans, and other people do not recognize this speech. A recording of the power song can be found in the San Teodoro area of Oriental Mindoro.

Phonemes

The Iraya languages distinguishes 20 phonemes:

• 13 consonants: p, b, m, t, d, l, s, r, k, g, ŋ, ‘
• 3 semivowels: w, y, h
• 4 vowels: i, a, e [ɨ], o

The following charts illustrate the phonemes by articulation. The consonant is represented as Template:Angbr in common writing, and the high central vowel is represented by Template:Angbr. The consonant can have both a dental or alveolar point of articulation.

Iraya consonants

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stops	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Voiced stops	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Nasals	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Fricatives		Template:IPA link
Laterals		Template:IPA link
Flaps (or Trills)		Template:IPA link ~ Template:IPA link
Semivowels	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link

Iraya vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Mid			Template:IPA link
Low		Template:IPA link

Intonation

Declarative paragraph: The first sentence starts at a high pitch. Then, each of the next sentences have a lower pitch. The last sentence will have the lowest pitch.

Emotional or dramatic paragraphs: This is the opposite of declarative paragraphs. Each sentence becomes higher than the previous sentence, until the last sentence ends with a more or less higher pitch and long pause.

Syllables

The following syllable types are used in the Iraya language. (C = consonant; V = vowel)

1. CV (e.g. 'you'; 'who')
2. CVC (e.g. 'why; what')
3. CCV (e.g. 'fireworks')
4. CCVC (e.g. 'place; put')

In consonant clusters, the Iraya language only uses /w/ or /r/ as the second consonant in an onset cluster, as in the two examples and presented above (the latter being a Spanish loanword).

Pronouns

Nominative (or subjective) and genitive (or possessive) cases are distinguished for pronouns. For example, the pronoun 'I' translated to in Iraya, and the pronoun 'my' is . The Iraya language has dual pronoun forms based on the numeral 'two'. The following table presents the Iraya pronominal paradigm.Template:Sfn

Iraya pronouns

		singular		dual	plural
		nominative	genitive
1st person	exclusive
	inclusive
2nd person
3rd person

Demonstratives

Zorc (1974) lists the following demonstratives:Template:Sfn

Directional

English	Iraya
this
that (near)
that (far)
here
there (near)
there (far)

Question words

Iraya question words

English	Iraya
How much
How much
What	,
Why
Where

The two words and both translate to 'how much, how many' but have different uses. Examples of these question words are given below:

• 'How far (how much distance) is it to town?'
• 'How much older am I than you?'

The latter sentence uses because it is counting age.

Temporal adverbs

Time

English	Iraya
A little while ago
Previously
Now
Still
In the future

Numerals

Numbers

	Cardinal	Ordinal
One/first
Two/second	,	,
Three/third
Four/fourth	,

Vocabulary

More words

English	Iraya
Both
No more, not anymore
Few, some
All, whole
More
Small, fine
Enough, sufficient
Each, every

References

• Template:Cite thesis
• Template:Cite thesis