The Kagayanen language is spoken in the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Palawan Palawan (), officially the Province of Palawan ( cyo, Probinsya i'ang Palawan; tl, Lalawigan ng Palawan), is an archipelagic province of the Philippines that is located in the region of Mimaropa. It is the largest province in the country in t ...

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 ...

. It belongs to the

Manobo The Lumad are a group of Austronesian indigenous people in the southern Philippines. It is a Cebuano term meaning "native" or "indigenous". The term is short for Katawhang Lumad (Literally: "indigenous people"), the autonym officially adopte ...

subgroup of the Austronesian language family, and is the only member of this subgroup that is not spoken on

Mindanao Mindanao ( ) ( Jawi: مينداناو) is the second-largest island in the Philippines, after Luzon, and seventh-most populous island in the world. Located in the southern region of the archipelago, the island is part of an island group of ...

or nearby islands.

Distribution

Kagayanen is spoken in the following areas. * Palawan Province: Cagayancillo Island between Negros and Palawan *Palawan coastal communities *southern Palawan:

Balabac Island Balabac Island is the southernmost island of the Palawan province, and therefore the westernmost undisputed island in the Philippines, only about north from Sabah, Malaysia, across the Balabac Strait. Administratively, the island forms the m ...

*northern Palawan:

Busuanga Busuanga, officially the Municipality of Busuanga ( tgl, Bayan ng Busuanga), is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Palawan, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 25,617 people. History Oral tradition has it ...

and Coron *other areas around the Philippines: Iloilo Province; Silay, Negros; Manila; Quezon and Rizal areas

Phonology

occurs only in loan words, proper names, or in words that have in the cognates of neighboring languages. Outside of loanwords, becomes between vowels. Comparative and historical evidence suggests that and were in

complementary distribution In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...

before a split occurred with pressure from contact with

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 ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

, and Tagalog. ranges between and , except in unstressed syllables (as well as before

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

s) where it lowers to or . Similarly, lowers to in unstressed syllables, before consonant clusters, and word-finally. It is otherwise .

Notes

References

* * * Manobo languages Languages of Palawan {{GCPhilippine-lang-stub