Bukid language


The Bukid language, Binukid or Bukidnon, is an Austronesian language spoken by indigenous peoples of Northern Mindanao in southern Philippines. The word Bukid means "mountain" or “highland” while Binukid means "in the manner, or style, of the mountain or highland". It is a de facto co-official language in Bukidnon province, where it is referred to as Higaonon. There are many dialects but there is mutual intelligibility. The dialect of Malaybalay, in the Pulangi area, is considered to be the prestige and standard variety.

Distribution

Binukid is spoken in the following areas.
Binukid consists of 20 segmental phonemes and 1 suprasegmental phoneme. The syllable is the basic unit of word structure, and each syllable consists of one vowel and one or two consonants only, arranged in the following patterns: CV, CVC and, in some instances, CCV. A word consists of one or more of these syllables.

Consonants

There are 16 consonants in Binukid. In some instances, there is a voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate which appears in Spanish loanwords.
BilabialAlveolarVelarPalatalGlottal
voiceless stopptkʔ
voiced stopbdɡ
fricativesh
nasalmnŋ
laterall
tapɾ
semivowelwj

The phoneme is sometimes trilled which is used in intervocalic position or in Spanish loanwords by some speakers. All consonants except are found in initial and final position in the syllable; is found only syllable-initial.

Vowels

There are generally four vowels in Binukid.
Front Central Back
Closeiu
Close-midɘ
Openä

Suprasegmentals

There is a suprasegmental phoneme of stress which usually falls on the penultimate syllable. Stress give contrast to words of the same segmental phonemes; for example beleng means "surprise" while beléng means "drunk". Long words may have more than one stress: balángkawítan "rooster". Stress commonly shift when suffixes are added to the word or when the speaker wishes to emphasize the word.

Grammar

Pronouns

The following set of pronouns are the pronouns found in the Bukid language. The /d/-final allomorphs of the vowel-final NOM or GEN pronouns are used almost exclusively before en, a bound adverbial.
NOM or GEN freeNOM boundGEN boundOBL free or bound
1st person singularsiakakukanak
2nd person singularsikawkanuikaw
3rd person singularØØdinkandin
1st person dualsikitkitakanit
1st person plural inclusivesikuykuytawkanuy
1st person plural exclusivesikaykaydaykanay
2nd person pluralsinyukawnuyinyu
3rd person pluralsiransirandankandan

Writing System and Orthography

Binukid uses the Latin script, particularly the Filipino abakada in writing the language. The Binukid alphabet consists of the following letters which correspond to one phoneme. Word-initial and word-final glottal stops are not written but glottal stops following a consonant is marked by a hyphen. Example: hab-ung "mildew". The phoneme is represented by a digraph ⟨ng⟩, which is sometimes considered as a separate letter.
LetterAaBbKkDdEeGgHhIiLlMmNnPpRrSsTtUuWwYy
Phonemeäbkdɘghilmnpɾstuwj

Suprasegmental phonemes and glottalization are featured in writing Binukid. Stress is indicated by an acute accent ⟨′⟩. A grave accent ⟨`⟩ is marked over syllable- or word-final vowel to indicate a following glottal stop. If stress is shown on the final letter and there is a following glottal stop, a circumflex accent ⟨ˆ⟩ is used. There is no marking for words whose stress falls on the penultimate syllable and without a secondary stress.
Examples:
Other letters are introduced through proper names, for example:
The plural particle marker manga is written mga, following accepted Philippine usage.