Southern Alta language

Southern Alta
	Kabulowan, Kabuluwan
Native to	Philippines
Region	Luzon
Native speakers	(1,000 cited 1982)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Northern Luzon Meso-Cordilleran Alta Southern Alta; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	agy
Glottolog	sout2905[2]
	Area where Southern Alta is spoken according to Ethnologue

Southern Alta (also known as Kabuluen, Kabulowan or Kabuluwan, Kabuluwen, Ita, Beluga, Pugot), is a distinctive Aeta language of the mountains of northern Philippines. This article will discuss Southern Alta's location, vocabulary, similarities and differences shared with other languages of the Philippines. Southern Alta is one of many endangered languages that risks being lost if it is not passed on by current speakers. Most speakers of Southern Alta also speak Filipino. [1]

Southern Alta is not particularly close to Northern Alta or to other languages of Luzon. Both Northern and Southern Alta have a significant proportion of vocabulary that is unique to each other, however, they are also very different from the other. Many Southern Alta also interact primarily with Tagalog speakers, sharing similarities between both languages.[3] Tagalog is a more widely spoken language in the Philippines, using an alphabet that has 5 vowels and 15 consonants. Although Southern Alta and Tagalog share similarities, Southern Alta still remains a very distinct language that constitutes at least one coordinate branch of the large Meso-Cordilleran group of Northern Luzon languages. [4] The Southern Alta are also commonly referred to Kabuluwan, which may associate them with the Bulu, a small river flowing west past Malibay in Northern Bulacan Province.

As a critically endangered language, Southern Alta has very few speakers. Currently, Southern Alta has a population of 1,000 speakers.

Geographic distribution

Southern Alta is spoken primarily in the Sierra Madre of eastern Nueva Ecija and in nearby coastal areas of Quezon Province.[3] Lawrence Reid collected data from San Miguel, located east of Rio Chico, a barrio (barangay) of General Tinio, Nueva Ecija. There are also Southern Alta living further south near Norzagaray in Bulacan (Reid 2013: 339). A phonologically more conservative dialect is spoken by a group known as the Edimala in Dicapanikian and Dicapanisan, on the coast north of Dingalan (Reid 2013: 339).

History

Prior to 1937, no information is available on the early history of the language. [3] The research available to date has a direct bearing problem on when and how the Philippines began speaking the language of Southern Alta. [3]

Dialects

Southern Alta is a very distinct language, however, it shares similarities to the language Tagalog, and Northern Alta. Southern Alta may be distantly related to other Philippine languages as well. Southern Alta is most similar to Northern Alta, with a lexical similarity of 34%. [1] Sharing those similarities can be viewed as dialect borrowing, which is borrowing sounds, grammar, or vocabulary. [5]

Endangerment of the Language

Today, Southern Alta risks becoming extinct in the near future. With only 1,000 speakers, or less, the language is categorized as critically endangered. Due to Southern Alta not being a common spoken language in the Philippines, it is likely that the language will soon be lost and will not continue to be passed down, eventually becoming a "dead language".

Grammar

There is not much known about the language of Southern Alta because it is a little known language of the Philippines. The only data previously available on Southern Alta is an unpublished wordlist of 350 words collected by Wesley Petro (1974), formerly of New Tribes Mission. [3]

Vocabulary

To get a better understanding of a few words, as well as the language of Southern Alta, below is a table of words in English and how that word would be translated in Southern Alta.

Unique forms - Southern Alta. [3]

horn	begwiʔ	warm by fire	ʔiliad
hungry	kopposan	wash clothes	taptapan
kiss	ʔo:sengan	waterfall	ta:bi
know (a fact)	ʔono:loŋkud	weep	kukbiʔ
know (a person)	ʔullupaʔan	white	puklaw
land, soil	du:pit	wide	layát
leaf	ʔa:gidna	widow	na:dit
learn	gewyan	wind	kabuán

Northern and Southern Alta are distantly related languages. Below is a table that shows similarities between words spoken in both Southern Alta (ALTS) and Northern Alta (ALTN).

Uniquely shared lexical items - Northern and Southern Alta. [3]

Gloss	ALTS	ALTN
carry on shoulder	bitlay	bɨtlayɨn
flood	dakol	da:ʔl
friend	ko:yug	kuyug
hot (weather), fever	mopnaŋ	panaŋ14
know how	muŋnul	mannul
lost	minaybut	ʔi:but
love	ʔobbudin	budin
mud	lu:tit	lutít
night	dalam	dalam
sleep	pulád	po:lɨd
sweet	la:nis	la:nis

gollark: ah, that's probably it

gollark: I have.

gollark: I can't see it in the list.

gollark: Wait, did <#457999277311131649> get deleted?

gollark: I could implement my own esosearch.

References

Southern Alta at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Southern Alta". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Reid, Lawrence (1991). The Alta Languages of the Philippines
Lawrence, Reid. "Who Are the Philippine Negritos? Evidence from Language".
Dutton, T.; Tryon, D.T. (1994). Language Contact and Change in the Austronesian World. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.