Botolan is a

Sambalic language The Sambalic languages are a part of the Central Luzon language family spoken by the Sambals, an ethnolinguistic group on the western coastal areas of Central Luzon and the Zambales mountain ranges. Demographics The largest Sambalic languages a ...

spoken by 32,867 (

SIL SIL, Sil and sil may refer to: Organizations * Servis Industries Limited, Pakistan * Smithsonian Institution Libraries * SIL International, formerly Summer Institute of Linguistics * Apex Silver Mines (former American Stock Exchange ticker symb ...

2000)

Sambal Sambal is an Indonesian chilli sauce or paste, typically made from a mixture of a variety of chilli peppers with secondary ingredients, such as shrimp paste, garlic, ginger, shallot, scallion, palm sugar, and lime juice. ''Sambal'' is an Indo ...

, primarily in the

Zambal The Sambal people are a Filipino ethnolinguistic group living primarily in the province of Zambales and the Pangasinense municipalities of Bolinao and Anda. The term may also refer to the general inhabitants of Zambales. In 1950s, hundreds of ...

municipalities of Botolan and

Cabangan Cabangan, officially the Municipality of Cabangan, is a 4th class municipality of the Philippines, municipality in the Philippine Province, province of Zambales, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 28,118 people. C ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Language status is 5 (developing).

Varieties

The Ayta people of sitio Villar, Botolan, and sitio Kakilingan, Santa Fe,

also speak a Botolan dialect with some unique lexical items.

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

reports Ayta Hambali (Hambali Botolan), Sambali Botolan as dialects of Sambal Botolan. Among themselves, Ayta Hambali reportedly use some words that are similar to Ayta, Mag-Anchi.

Phonology

Botolan has 20

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

s: 16

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s and four

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s. Syllable structure is relatively simple. Each syllable contains at least a consonant and a vowel.

Vowels

Botolan has four vowels. They are: */a/ an

open front unrounded vowel The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language bu ...

similar to

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

''father'' */e/ a

close-mid front unrounded vowel The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . For the close-mid front unrounde ...

similar to

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

*/i/ a

close front unrounded vowel The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that occurs in most spoken languages, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol i. It is similar to the vowel sound in the English wo ...

similar to English ''machine'' */u/ (written as ‘o’) a

close back unrounded vowel The close back unrounded vowel, or high back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system ...

similar to English ''flute'' There are five main

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

s: , , , /ij/, and .

Consonants

Below is a chart of Botolan consonants. All the stops are unaspirated. The

velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...

occurs in all positions including at the beginning of a word. Note: Consonants and can sometimes interchange as they were once allophones.

Stress

Stress is phonemic in Botolan. Word stress is very important; it differentiates

homonyms In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...

, e.g. ('I') and ('elbow').

Historical sound changes

Many words pronounced with and in Tagalog have and , respectively, in their cognates in Botolan. Compare and with the Tagalog and .

Sample texts

The Lord's Prayer

Version from Matthew

Philippine national proverb

Below is a translation in Botolan of the Philippine national proverb "He who does not acknowledge his beginnings will not reach his destination," followed by the original in Tagalog. *Botolan: *Tagalog:

References

External links

Grammar sketch of Botolan found on Carl Rubino's homepageSample recordings from the GRN Network
in Botolan

Bible verses in Botolan {{DEFAULTSORT:Botolan Language Sambalic languages Languages of Zambales