Background

Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Northern Philippine / Northern Luzon / Ilocano

Also known as Iloko, Ilocano is spoken throughout the Northern Philippines.
The northern dialect is represented below.

Phonology

Consonants

/h/ appears in loanwords but only one native word “haán,” so it is not recognized as a phoneme in the language (Yamamoto 2017, 23).
Not all analyses consider /ʔ/ to be a phoneme; instead, it is argued that it predictably epenthesized. However, Yamamoto (2017) argues that epenthesis only explains the presence of glottal stops word-initially and intervocalically. Because it is also found in other environments, it must have phonemic status (pp. 23-26).
/r/ is typically pronounced as a dental flap, but is realized as a trill in careful speech (Rubino 2000, xxvi).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t̪ d̪			k ɡ	ʔ
Fricatives			s
Nasals	m	n̪			ŋ
Flaps			ɾ
Approximants	w		l	j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

The southern dialect has 6 phonemic vowels, while the northern dialect has 5 (Rubino 1998, 11–12).
Although /o/ was historically recognized as an allophone of /u/, it is now considered a phoneme due to the adoption of many Spanish loanwords (Rubino 2000, xxviii).
There is some debate as to how many diphthongs are present in Ilocano. Constantino (1971) specifies 14 (p. 6), while Rubino (1998) specifies 5 (p. xxix). Yamamoto (2017) argues that such combinations actually represent sequences of glides and vowels rather than diphthongs (p. 32). Due to a lack of consensus, I have chosen not to account for them.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d̪/
e	/ɛ/
g	/ɡ/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n̪/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t̪/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
-	/ʔ/
Digraph
ng	/ŋ/

Lenition Rules

/k/ and /t/ sometimes debuccalize to /ʔ/ preceding consonants (Rubino 2000, xxiv)
/k/ often spirantizes intervocalically (Rubino 2000, xxiv).

Misc. Rules

Glottal stops predictably occur preceding word initial vowels (Rubino 1998, 12).
Glottal stops occur intervocalically (except with ia, ie, iu, and ua) (Rubino 1998, 12).
Gemination can occur with every consonant except /ʔ/ and /h/ (Rubino 2000, xxv, xxxiv).
/t/,/d/, and /s/ palatalize to /tʃ/, /dʒ/, and /ʃ/ respectively preceding /j/ or /i/. /j/ and /i/ also must be followed by a vowel (Rubino 2000, xxvii). /t/ also palatalizes to /tʃ/ in borrowed words (Rubino 2000, xxv).
/u/ is sometimes realized as [o] word finally (Constantino 1971, 4)
Prefixes ending with /ŋ/ undergo nasal assimilation according to the place of articulation of the follow obstruent (Yamamoto 2017, 37).

References

Constantino, Ernesto. 1971. Ilokano Reference Grammar. PALI Language Texts: Philippines. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Rubino, Carl R. Galvez. 2000. Ilocano Dictionary and Grammar: Ilocano-English, English-Ilocano. PALI Language Texts. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

———, ed. 1998. Ilocano: Ilocano-English, English-Ilocano Dictionary and Phrasebook. New York: Hippocrene Books.

Yamamoto, Kyosuke. 2017. “A Phonological Sketch of Ilocano.” Kyoto University Linguistic Research 36: 21–49.

Ilocano

Emily Strand