Ga'dang or Gâdang is an Austronesian language spoken in Northern Luzon,

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

particularly in Paracelis,

Mountain Province Mountain Province (; ; ; ; ; ) is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Bontoc while Bauko is the largest municipality. Mountain Province was formerly referred to as Mountain ...

Luzon Luzon ( , ) is the largest and most populous List of islands in the Philippines, island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the List of islands of the Philippines, Philippine archipelago, it is the economic and political ce ...

; Alfonso Lista,

Ifugao Ifugao, officially the Province of Ifugao (; ), is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Lagawe and it borders Benguet to the west, Mountain Province to the north, Isabela t ...

; and Tabuk, Kalinga. There are some residents of speakers in

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

and

Nueva Vizcaya Nueva Vizcaya, officially the Province of Nueva Vizcaya (; ; Pangasinan: ''Luyag/Probinsia na Nueva Vizcaya''; ), is a landlocked province in the Philippines located in the Cagayan Valley region in Luzon. Its capital and largest town is Bayo ...

. Many Ga'dang speakers speak Ilocano as their second language.

Phonology

The Ga'dang language is related to Ibanag, Itawis, Malaueg and others. It is distinct in that it features

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

not present in many neighboring

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...

. As an example, the "f", "v", "z" and "j" sounds appear in Ga'dang. There are notable differences from other languages in the distinction between "r" and "l" (and between "r" and "d"), and the "f" sound is a

voiceless bilabial fricative The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a Latinised form of the Greek letter Phi. Features Features of th ...

somewhat distinct from the

fortified A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Lat ...

"p" sound common in many Philippine languages (but not much closer to the English

voiceless labiodental fricative The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in a number of spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Some scholars also posit the voiceless labiodental approx ...

). Finally, the (Spanish) minimally-voiced "J" sound has evolved to a plosive (so the name ''Joseph'' sounds to the American ear as ''Kosip'').

Vowels

Most Ga'dang speakers use six vowel sounds: , , , , ,

Consonants

Ga'dang features doubled consonants, so the language may sound guttural to Tagalog, Ilokano, and even Pangasinan speakers. The uniqueness of this circumstance is often expressed by saying Ga'dang speakers have "a hard tongue". For example: (tood-duh). which means rice. Ga'dang is also one of the Philippine languages which is excluded from - allophony.

Samples

References

Languages of Mountain Province Languages of Ifugao Cagayan Valley languages {{Philippine-lang-stub