Iraya language


The Iraya language is a language spoken by Mangyans on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. Zorc places the Iraya language within the North Mangyan group of Malayo-Polynesian languages, though Lobel notes that it shows "considerable differences" to Tadyawan and Alangan, the other languages in this group. 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.
Ethnologue reports that Iraya is spoken in the following municipalities of northern Mindoro island.
Barbian also lists the location of Calamintao, on the northeastern boundary of Santa Cruz municipality.
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 Ibaba, Iraya knows a quasi-liturgical speech register known as Ita'as. This type of speech is used in power songs used by shamans of Occidental Mindoro. Ita'as 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, o
The following charts illustrate the phonemes by articulation. The consonant is represented as in common writing, and the high central vowel is represented by. The consonant can have both a dental or alveolar point of articulation.
LabialDentalPalatalVelarGlottal
Voiceless stops
Voiced stops
Nasals
Fricatives
Laterals
Flaps ~
Semivowels

FrontCentralBack
High
Mid
Low

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.
  1. CV
  2. CVC
  3. CCV
  4. CCVC
In consonant clusters, the Iraya language only uses /w/ or /r/ as the second consonant in an onset cluster, as in the two examples kwitis and pwistu presented above.

Pronouns

Nominative and genitive cases are distinguished for pronouns. For example, the pronoun 'I' translated to aku in Iraya, and the pronoun 'my' is na'ay. The Iraya language has dual pronoun forms based on the numeral 'two'. The following table presents the Iraya pronominal paradigm.

Demonstratives

Zorc lists the following demonstratives:
EnglishIraya
thistiya'
that nabah
that nata'
heretuwa'
there sabah
there sata'

Question words

The two words bidu' and umaning both translate to 'how much, how many' but have different uses. Examples of these question words are given below:
  • Bidu' mada dayu' ag gura'an? 'How far is it to town?'
  • Umaning aku kuyay kawu? 'How much older am I than you?'
The latter sentence uses umaning because it is counting age.