IDEA: International Dialects of English ArchivePhilippines 8
Listen to Philippines 8, an 89-year-old woman from Vigan City, Ilocos Sur, and various other places in the Philippines. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.
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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
AGE: 89
DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/10/1923
PLACE OF BIRTH: Vigan City, Ilocos Sur, Philippines
GENDER: female
ETHNICITY: Filipino of Ilocano ancestry
OCCUPATION: N/A
EDUCATION: college
AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:
The subject lived for the greater part of her life in various places in the Philippines, namely Metro Manila, Baguio City (Mountain Province), and Imus (Cavite province).
OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:
She is a fluent speaker of four languages: Ilocano, Tagalog, Spanish, and English. Subject attended university in Manila and spent most of her life in Tagalog-speaking areas.
The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.
RECORDED BY: Aldrin Fauni-Tanos
DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/07/2013
PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A
TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A
DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A
ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:
I am an old grandmother, 89 years of age. I grew up in the province of Ilocos Sur. In nineteen, uh, thirt–nineteen forty, I went up to Manila to study, but then, after one year and one semester, the [Second World] War broke out. The first thing I, I felt, and also my cousins with whom I’m living with, were all happy because I — we thought that war was something to, to enjoy. But then, when we heard the first bomb drop, and then lights all went out, then we all trembled, and then began to realize that war is such a very hard thing to experience. Before my brother-in-law from … came from the province of Vigan, Ilocos Sur, to bring me home. But, because transportation was not very easy at that time, until the, the fall of Bataan when, when traveling was much easier. So, we rode in a huge bus on the … on the way to the province every, every town wherein a garrison of the Japanese, um, uh, Japanese army are … we had to stop to be checked. The soldiers have to suspect all the things inside the truck and inspect us for arms, but then with the help of God we arrived in Vigan. And then, we felt that the Japanese were after all friendly. They celebrated the fall of Bataan, others singing, dancing to make the day happy.
[Speaks in Ilocano:] Ang Ilocano ay kuripot kanó. Saán nga agpaysó daytá. Ammó mi ití agbiág na simple lang. Kaya … (interjection “Ay!”) Kayát, kayát ko na ibagá kadakayó na no mangáng kamí sa probinsya naténg na addá sagpáw na ikán na tinuno wennó pinirito na karné. Awán ití Coke wennó aniaman, danúm laéng ití iniinom namin. [English translation: They say that Ilocanos are [wealthy but] stingy. That’s not true, at all. We live a simple life. In the province, we actually only eat vegetables with broiled fish or fried meat. We don’t even have Coke or anything. We just drink plain water.]TRANSCRIBED BY: Aldrin Fauni-Tanos
DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/11/2013
PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A
TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A
DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A
SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:
The native language spoken in Vigan and Ilocos Sur is Ilokano/Ilocano, a member of the Northern Philippine (Northern Luzon) group of languages and one of the eight major languages of the Philippines. It has also served as a lingua franca of the northern region for years, spoken as a secondary language by more than two million people who are native speakers of other languages in Northern Luzon. For more information on the Ilokano language, visit Wikipedia.
Although not mutually intelligible languages, speakers of Ilocano generally understand and speak Tagalog via the current education system. However, the subject, having lived only in exclusively Tagalog-speaking areas for the latter part of her life, often finds it difficult to express herself in Ilocano unless spoken to in that language. One can hear from the recording how she struggles with her own mother tongue.
- Subject’s use of a trilled [r] is clearly noticeable, a stereotypical feature of an Ilocano accent (whether it’s an Ilocano accent of Tagalog or English). Sometimes, she alternates it with a flapped [r], even in words like “first.”
- The “spacing” of syllables or entire words from each other are sometimes accentuated, which is not uncommon for most speakers of Philippine languages. “See” and “it” in “see it” are “interrupted” by a glottal stop, instead of being “connected” as one would in English.
- S-voicing [to make a /z/ sound] is weak in words like “deserted” and “disease.”
- Although the subject can generally pronounce dental fricatives in [th] words, they can sometimes be replaced with a /t/ or a /d/ in quick speech such as “that.”
- Subject occasionally substitutes [v] with /b/, and sometimes even /β/ (a feature of Spanish). You can hear this in “very.”
- There is no yod-dropping in words like “new” or “duke,” as is common among older speakers.
- Words that end with /ʧ/ or /ʤ/ are substituted with /ts/ and /ds/, respectively. You can hear this in “much,” “huge,” “age,” and “such.”
- Words that begin with [s] are intercepted with /e/ or /i/, which is a feature of some Spanish accents.
- As with many speakers of Philippine languages, the /t/ is omitted in words that end with a /kt/ cluster, such as “picked” or “checked” (usually past participles of regular verbs).
- Subject uses a slightly more “British” pronunciation of “hurry,” using /ʌ/ instead of the more common /ɜ/. This could be a reflection of the more “conservative” varieties of English that were taught to her generation.
- Her /s/ borders on /ʃ/ at times, which is not uncommon for speakers of Spanish. You can hear this in “goose,” “surprising,” and “easier.”
- Not unlike other speakers of Philippine languages and Spanish, subject’s diphthong /oʊ/ (as in words like “so” or “no”) is monophthongized into /o/ or /ɔ/.
- Subject uses /aɪl/ in words like “futile,” “fragile,” or “mobile,” as with most Filipinos.
- Her pronunciation of the second syllable in “began” with an /ɛ/ reflects a DRESS orientation toward TRAP words, in contrast with younger speakers who frequently use /æ/ or /ɑ/ (or even /ʌ/). This is unsurprisingly common for her generation.
COMMENTARY BY: Aldrin Fauni-Tanos
DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/11/2013
The archive provides:
- Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
- Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
- Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
- In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech. In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list). The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).
For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.
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