Ilocano Alphabet & Kur-itan

Ilocano is written in the Latin alphabet in the same order as Filipino: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ NG O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. NG is one letter here, the sound at the end of English 'sing', and Ilocano uses it at the start of words all the time: ngem (but), ngarud (then, so), ngipen (tooth). It has no character of its own, so it is typed as N followed by G, and dictionaries file it after N and Ñ. This is the alphabet children learn in school; Iloko was among the languages used for Kindergarten to Grade 3 instruction when MTB-MLE began in School Year 2012–13.

Native words need only twenty of these letters, A B K D E G H I L M N NG O P R S T U W Y. C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X and Z come in with names, loanwords and English or Spanish spellings. The older Spanish-style spelling wrote the k sound with c and qu, which is why the language is Ilocano in English and the provinces are Ilocos; modern Ilocano spelling writes k, as in Iloko and Ilokano. Both spellings are correct and both are searched: Iloko is the name of the language, Ilocano or Ilokano is the people and the everyday English name for both.

Ilocano spelling: Ñ, doubled consonants and hyphens

Ñ (enye) and NG are also alphabet entries beyond single-letter A–Z. It turns up in Spanish-era names of people and places, such as Niño, Muñoz and the town of Peñarrubia in Abra, while Spanish loanwords in ordinary Ilocano are usually respelled the Ilocano way. Typed without its tilde, Peñarrubia reads as Pe-narrubia, so it is worth copying the real ñ.

Ilocano spelling is close to phonetic, one letter for one sound, and it shows the language's own features plainly. Doubled consonants are really pronounced long, and they often make a plural: ubing (child) becomes ubbing (children), babai (woman) becomes babbai (women). Repeating the start of a word, also written out in full, makes plurals and intensives: balay (house), balbalay (houses). The letter e in native words stands for a central, muffled vowel that Tagalog lacks, as in ngem (but) and ngipen (tooth). The hyphen (-) separates repeated syllables that would otherwise run together, as in ay-ayaten (to love), and is used, as in Filipino, where a consonant ends a prefix before a root that starts with a vowel. Accent marks are left out in ordinary writing; stress is for the reader to know.

Kur-itan, the old Ilocano script

Before and during the early Spanish period Ilocanos wrote in their form of the Philippine script family best known by its Tagalog name, baybayin; in Ilocano it is called kur-itan (also spelled kurditan), and it is being revived today by teachers, artists and cultural groups in the Ilocos provinces. Each letter is a consonant with the vowel a (ᜊ ba, ᜃ ka); a mark above changes the vowel to e or i (ᜊᜒ bi), a mark below to o or u (ᜊᜓ bu), and the three vowels ᜀ ᜁ ᜂ stand alone. Old texts wrote d and r with one letter, ᜇ.

The old script could not write a bare consonant at the end of a syllable, a real problem for a language full of words like naimbag and ubbing. The cross-shaped mark ᜔ that cancels the vowel was introduced for Ilocano: the Augustinian friar Francisco López used it in his Ilocano catechism of the early 1620s, and modern writers of baybayin, badlit and kur-itan alike still use it. Unicode encodes kur-itan in the Tagalog block, where ᜔ is the Tagalog sign virama; the separate letter ᜍ ra was added in Unicode 14.0 (2021) for writers who keep r and d apart, and the punctuation marks ᜵ and ᜶ that end phrases and sentences sit in the neighbouring Hanunoo block. Fonts such as Noto Sans Tagalog display them all.

How to type ñ, ₱ and Ilocano words

Philippine computers and phones use the ordinary US keyboard, so everything in Ilocano except ñ and ₱ is already on it. On Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: ñ Alt+0241 (or Alt+164), Ñ Alt+0209 (or Alt+165). With the US-International layout, type ~ then n. On a Mac, press Option+N, then n (Shift+N for Ñ). On Android and iPhone keyboards, hold down n and slide to ñ. In HTML, write ñ and Ñ.

The peso sign ₱ (U+20B1) has no key: in Word on Windows type 20b1 and press Alt+X, on a phone look among the currency symbols of the keyboard, or copy it from this page. Many people simply write P or PHP before the amount, as in ₱150 or P150. Kur-itan has no standard keyboard on computers, so most people copy its letters or use a font that maps them to Latin keys.

Where Ilocano is spoken, and Ilocano vs Tagalog

Ilocano is the language of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Abra, and Ilocano settlers carried it into the Cagayan Valley, the Cordillera, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Zambales and as far as Mindanao. It is the common language of northern Luzon, which many Ibanag, Ifugao, Kankanaey and Ibaloi speakers use with each other. CLDR estimates about 11 million speakers, though the 2020 census ranked Ilocano fourth among languages generally spoken at home, after Tagalog, Bisaya/Binisaya and Hiligaynon/Ilonggo. Ilocanos were the largest group among the Filipino workers who went to Hawaii's sugar plantations from 1906, and Ilocano is still the most common Philippine language there.

Ilocano is a Philippine language of the Northern Luzon branch, not a dialect of Tagalog, and a Tagalog speaker does not understand it without learning it. The alphabet is shared, the words are not: Tagalog salamat (thank you) is Ilocano agyamanak, oo (yes) is wen, hindi (no) is saan, masarap (delicious) is naimas and kapatid (sibling) is kabsat. See the Filipino, Cebuano, Bikol, Pangasinan and Kapampangan collections for the other big languages of the country, and the Spanish one for the ñ they all borrowed.