Kapampangan language


Kapampangan language is an Austronesian language, and one of the eight major languages of the Philippines. It is the primary and predominant language of the entire province of Pampanga and southern Tarlac, on the southern part of Luzon's central plains geographic region, most of whom belong to the Kapampangan ethnic group. Kapampangan is also spoken in northeastern Bataan, as well as in the municipalities of Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and Zambales that border Pampanga. A few Aeta groups in Central Luzon's southern part also understand and even speak Kapampangan as well. The language is known honorifically as Amánung Sísuan.

Classification

Kapampangan is one of the Central Luzon languages of the Austronesian language family. Its closest relatives are the Sambalic languages of Zambales province and the Bolinao language spoken in the towns of Bolinao and Anda in Pangasinan. These languages share the same reflex of the proto-Austronesian consonant *R.

History

Kapampangan is derived from the root word pampáng. The language was historically spoken in the Kingdom of Tondo, ruled by the Lakans.
A number of Kapampangan dictionaries and grammar books were written during the Spanish colonial period. Diego Bergaño wrote two 18th-century books about the language: Arte de la lengua Pampanga and Vocabulario de la lengua Pampanga . Kapampangan produced two 19th-century literary giants; Anselmo Fajardo was noted for Gonzalo de Córdova and Comedia Heróica de la Conquista de Granada, and playwright Juan Crisóstomo Soto wrote Alang Dios in 1901. "Crissotan" was written by Amado Yuzon, Soto's 1950s contemporary and Nobel Prize nominee for peace and literature, to immortalize his contribution to Kapampangan literature.

Geographic distribution

Kapampangan is predominantly spoken in the province of Pampanga and southern Tarlac. It is also spoken in border communities of the provinces of Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Zambales. In Mindanao, a significant Kapampangan-speaking minority also exists in South Cotabato, specifically in General Santos and the municipalities of Polomolok and Tupi. According to the 2000 Philippine census, 2,312,870 people spoke Kapampangan as their native language.

Phonology

Standard Kapampangan has 21 phonemes: 15 consonants and five vowels; some western dialects have six vowels. Syllabic structure is relatively simple; each syllable contains at least one consonant and a vowel.

Vowels

Kapampangan has five vowel phonemes:
Some dialects also include.
There are four main diphthongs:,,, and. In most dialects, and are reduced to and respectively.
Monophthongs have allophones in unstressed and syllable-final positions:
In the chart of Kapampangan consonants, all stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions, including the beginning of a word. Unlike other Philippine languages, Kapampangan lacks the phoneme /h/.
Stress is phonemic in Kapampangan. Primary stress occurs on the last or the next-to-last syllable of a word. Vowel lengthening accompanies primary or secondary stress, except when stress occurs at the end of a word. Stress shift can occur, shifting to the right or left to differentiate between nominal or verbal use :
Stress shift can also occur when one word is derived from another through affixation; again, stress can shift to the right or the left:
In Kapampangan, the proto-Philippine schwa vowel merged to /a/ in most dialects of Kapampangan; it is preserved in some western dialects. Proto-Philippine is tanam in Kapampangan, compared with Tagalog tanim, Cebuano tanom and Ilocano tanem.
Proto-Philippine merged with. The Kapampangan word for "new" is bayu; it is bago in Tagalog, baro in Ilocano, and baru in Indonesian.

Grammar

Nouns

Kapampangan nouns are not inflected, but are usually preceded by case markers. There are three types of case markers: absolutive, ergative, and oblique.
Unlike English and Spanish and Inuit and Basque, Kapampangan has Austronesian alignment. Austronesian alignment may work with nominative or ergative markers and pronouns.
Absolutive or nominative markers mark the actor of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. Ergative or genitive markers mark the object of an intransitive verb and the actor of a transitive one. It also marks possession. Oblique markers, similar to prepositions in English, mark location and direction. Noun markers are divided into two classes: names of people and everything else.
AbsolutiveErgativeOblique
Common singularing-ng, ningking
Common pluralding, ringringkaring
Personal singulari-ngkang
Personal pluraldi, ririkari

Examples:
Kapampangan pronouns are categorized by case: absolutive, ergative, and oblique.
Absolutive Absolutive ErgativeOblique
1st person singularyaku, i aku, akukukukanaku, kaku
2nd person singularikakamukeka
3rd person singulariya, yayanakeya, kaya
1st person dualikatakata, tatakekata
1st person plural inclusiveikatamu, itamukatamu, tamutamu, takekatamu, kekata
1st person plural exclusiveikami, ikekami, kemikekami, keke
2nd person pluralikayu, ikokayu, koyukekayu, keko
3rd person pluralilalada, rakarela

Examples

Genitive pronouns follow the word they modify. Oblique pronouns can replace the genitive pronoun, but precede the word they modify.
The dual pronoun ikata and the inclusive pronoun ikatamu refer to the first and second person. The exclusive pronoun ikamí refers to the first and third persons.
Kapampangan differs from many Philippine languages in requiring the pronoun even if the noun it represents, or the grammatical antecedent, is present.
The pronouns ya and la have special forms when they are used in conjunction with the words ati and ala.
Both ati yu and ati ya are correct. The plural form is atilu and atila. Both ala la and ala lu are correct in the plural form. The singular forms are ala ya and ala yu.

Pronoun combinations

Kapampangan pronouns follow a certain order after verbs. The enclitic pronoun is always followed by another pronoun.
Pronouns also combine to form a portmanteau pronoun:
Portmanteau pronouns are not usually used in questions and with the word naman:
In the following chart, blank entries denote combinations which are deemed impossible. Column headings denote pronouns in the absolutive case, and the row headings denote the ergative case.
yaku
ika
ya
ikata
ikatamu
ikami
ikayo
ila
ku
da ka
ra ka		ke
keya		–––da ko
da kayu 		ko
ku la
mu
mu kume
mya		––mu ke
mu kami		–mo
mu la
na
na kuna kane
nya
na katana katamuna ke
na kami		na ko
na kayu		no
nu la
ta
––te
tya		–––to
ta la
tamu
––ta ya–––ta la
mi
–da ka
ra ka		mi ya––da ko
da kayu 		mi la
yu
yu ku–ye
ya		––yu ke
yu kami		yo
yu la
da
da ku
ra ku		da ka
ra ka		de
dya		da kata
ra kata		da katamu
ra katamu		da ke
da kami 		da ko
da kayu 		do
da la

Demonstrative pronouns

Kapampangan's demonstrative pronouns differ from other Philippine languages by having separate forms for singular and plural.
The demonstrative pronouns ini and iti both mean "this", but each has distinct uses. Iti usually refers to something abstract, but may also refer to concrete nouns: iting musika, iti ing gagawan mi. Ini is always concrete: ining libru, ini ing asu nang Juan.
In their locative forms, keni is used when the person spoken to is not near the subject spoken of; keti is used when the person spoken to is near the subject spoken of. Two people in the same country will refer to their country as keti, but will refer to their respective towns as keni; both mean "here".
The plural forms of a demonstrative pronoun and its existential form are exceptions. The plural of iyan is den/ren; the plural of niyan is daren; the plural of kanyan is karen, and the plural of oyan is oren. The existential form of iyan is ken.
Kapampangan verbs are morphologically complex, and take a variety of affixes reflecting focus, aspect and mode. The language has Austronesian alignment, and the verbs change according to triggers in the sentence. Kapampangan has five voices: agent, patient, goal, locative, and cirumstantial. The circumstantial voice prefix is used for instrument and benefactee subjects.
The direct case morphemes in Kapampangan are ing and reng, for plural subjects. Non-subject agents are marked with the ergative-case ning; non-subject patients are marked with the accusative-case -ng, which is cliticized onto the preceding word.

Ambiguities and irregularities

Speakers of other Philippine languages find Kapampangan verbs difficult because some verbs belong to unpredictable verb classes and some verb forms are ambiguous. The root word sulat exists in Tagalog and Kapampangan:
The object-focus suffix -an represents two focuses; the only difference is that one conjugation preserves -an in the completed aspect, and it is dropped in the other conjugation:
Other Philippine languages have separate forms; Tagalog has -in and -an in, Bikol and most of the Visayan languages have -on and -an, and Ilokano has -en and -an due to historical sound changes in the proto-Philippine /*e/.
A number of actor-focus verbs do not use the infix -um-, but are usually conjugated like other verbs which do, bulus, terak, lukas, sindi, saklu, takbang and tuki. Many of these verbs undergo a change of vowel instead of taking the infix -in-. In the actor focus, this happens only to verbs with the vowel /u/ in the first syllable; lukas is conjugated lukas, lulukas, and likas.
This change of vowel also applies to certain object-focus verbs in the completed aspect. In addition to /u/ becoming /i/, /a/ becomes /e/ in certain cases.
There is no written distinction between the two mag- affixes; magsalita may mean "is speaking" or "will speak", but there is an audible difference. means "will speak" while means "is speaking".
Infinitive &
contemplative		ProgressiveCompleted
Actor focus-um-CV--ín-
Actor focus–CV--in-
-i-
Actor focusm-mVm-min-
me-
Actor focusmag-mág-mig-, meg-
Actor focusma-má-ne-
Actor focusmaN-máN-meN-
Object focus-anCV-... -an-in-
-i-
-e-
Object focus
Benefactive focus		i-iCV-i- -in-
i- -i-
i- -e-
Object focus
Locative focus		-anCV-... -an-in-... -an
-i-... -an
-e-... -an
Instrument focusipaN-páN-piN-, peN
Reason focuska-ká-ke-

Enclitics

Examples:
To express existence and possession, the word atí is used:
Kapampangan has two negation words: alí and alá. Alí negates verbs and equations, and means "no" or "not":
Alá is the opposite of atí:
E is sometimes used instead of alí:
Komustá is used to ask how something is. Frequently used as a greeting, it is derived from the Spanish ¿cómo está?
Nanu means "what": Nanu ya ing gagawan mu?
Ninu means "who":
Nukarin, meaning "where", is used to ask about the location of an object and not used with verbs:
Kapampangan borrowed many words from Chinese, such as:
Due to the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism, Kapampangan also acquired words from Sanskrit. A few examples are:
The language also has many Spanish loanwords, including kómusta, suérti, kurus, karni, kórsunada and kasapégo and others such as times, for countings and numbers.

Writing systems and orthography

Kapampangan, like most Philippine languages, uses the Latin alphabet. Before the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, it was written with the Kulitan alphabet. Kapampangan is usually written in one of three different writing systems: sulat Baculud, sulat Wawa and a hybrid of the two, Amung Samson.
The first system is based on Spanish orthography, a feature of which involved the use of the letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨q⟩ to represent the phoneme /k/. ⟨C⟩ was used before /a/, /o/ and /u/, and ⟨q⟩ was used with ⟨u⟩ before the vowels /e/ and /i/. The Spanish-based orthography is primarily associated with literature by authors from Bacolor and the text used on the Kapampangan Pasion.
The second system, the Sulat Wawa, is an "indigenized" form which preferred ⟨k⟩ over ⟨c⟩ and ⟨q⟩ in representing the phoneme /k/. This orthography, based on the Abakada alphabet was used by writers from Guagua and rivaled writers from the nearby town of Bacolor.
The third system, Amung Samson hybrid orthography, intends to resolve the conflict in spelling between proponents of the sulat Baculud and sulat Wawa. This system was created by former Catholic priest Venancio Samson during the 1970s to translate the Bible into Kapampangan. It resolved conflicts between the use of ⟨q⟩ and ⟨c⟩ and ⟨k⟩ by using ⟨k⟩ before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩. The system also removed ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨ñ⟩, replacing them with ⟨ly⟩ and ⟨ny⟩.
Orthography has been debated by Kapampangan writers, and orthographic styles may vary by writer. The sulat Wawa system has become the popular method of writing due to the influence of the Tagalog-based Filipino language and its orthography. The sulat Wawa system is used by the Akademyang Kapampangan and the poet Jose Gallardo.

Orthographic history and disputes

From the 10th century AD to 1571, before the Spanish conquest of Lúsung Guo which resulted in the creation of the Province of Pampanga, Kapampangans used a writing system known as Kulitan or Sulat Kapampangan. Augustinian missionaries studied the Kapampangan language and its writing system.
As late as 1699, more than a century after the Spanish conquest, Spaniards continued studying the Kapampangan language and writing system. The Spanish introduced a Romanized orthography, known as the Bacolor Orthography, Súlat Bacúlud or Tutûng Kapampángan because of the number of works written in this orthography. The orthography contains the letters q, c, f, ñ and ll.
By the end of the Spanish colonization, the Abakada alphabet replaced c and q with k. Kapampangan nationalist writers from Wáwâ wanted to create an identity distinct from the Bacúlud literary tradition. They were inspired by José Rizal, who proposed simplifying the Romanized Tagalog by replacing c and q with k. Two Kapampangan writers from Wáwâ, Aurelio Tolentino and Monico Mercado have adapted Rizal's proposal into Kapampangan writing.
's Extension Program on Pampanga's new campus.
On December 31, 1937, Philippine president Manuel L. Quezon proclaimed the language based on Tagalog as the commonwealth's national language. Zoilo Hilario proposed standardizing Kapampangan orthography. A member of the Institute of National Language, Hilario sought to adopt the Abakada alphabet used in Tagalog as Kapampangan's orthographic system. The legal imposition of Tagalog as the Philippine national language placed all other Philippine languages in a subordinate position. The conflict between the "purists" and "anti-purists" which plagued the Tagalog literary scene was echoed by Kapampangan writers.
In 1970, Venancio Samson called the dispute over Kapampangan orthography to the attention of the Philippine Bible Society and submitted a proposal aimed at reconciling the old and the new spelling in Kapampangan writing with what is known as Ámung Samson's hybrid orthography. Samson's synthesis was readily accepted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Pampanga, which used it in most of its Kapampangan publications during the early 1970s.
In 1997, the Batiáuan Foundation said that the major obstacle to popularizing Kapampangan was the intense conflict over orthography. The prediction that the Kapampangans would be absorbed by the Tagalogs was seen by Kapampangan groups as a real threat, since Tagalog words were replacing indigenous words in spoken Kapampangan. They revised the Abakada alphabet in Kapampangan writing, removing the letter w and mandating simplified diacritical marks. According to Akademyang Kapampangan, the Batiáuan revision complicates Kapampangan writing and confuses adherents of their proposed orthography. Batiáuan insists that the diacritical marks are essential in written Kapampangan, because many words are spelled the same but are pronounced differently. From this perspective, diacritical marks facilitate understanding instead of complicating the language.

Prayers, words and sentences

Numbers:
Sentences:
Words: