Pangasinan Alphabet & Phrases

Pangasinan is written with the Latin letters A to Z, in the same order as English, plus NG, which is treated as one letter: the sound at the end of English 'sing', which Pangasinan also puts at the start of words, as in ngaran (name) and ngarem (afternoon). It has no character of its own, so it is typed as N followed by G. Ñ (enye) is not needed for native words, but it lives on in Spanish-era names of people and saints, such as Peña or Santo Niño, so it belongs on any Pangasinan list. In school, children follow the 28-letter Filipino alphabet order 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.

Spelling is close to phonetic: one letter for one sound, written the way the word is said. C, F, J, Q, V, X and Z turn up mainly in names and loanwords, and older Spanish-style spellings with c and qu survive in place names. Stress is not marked in ordinary writing. The one mark you see often is the apostrophe of the linker ya, which shrinks to 'y after a vowel: Pista ya Dayat becomes Pista'y Dayat, the Feast of the Sea held in Lingayen every May.

Pangasinan words and phrases: greetings, thank you, I love you

Greetings are built from maabig (good) and the linker ya: Maabig ya kabuasan is good morning, Maabig ya ngarem good afternoon and Maabig ya labi good evening. Thank you is Salamat, and Dakel ya salamat is thank you very much. I love you is Inaro ta ka, from aro, love. Yes is on, no is andi, and none is anggapo.

Counting from one to ten goes sakey, dua, talo, apat, lima, anem, pito, walo, siam, samplo. Several numbers look like their cousins across the Philippines (Tagalog apat, lima, pito, walo), while everyday words often differ: Pangasinan masamit (delicious) is Tagalog masarap, abong (house) is bahay, danum (water) is tubig and inaro ta ka is mahal kita. None of these need a letter beyond A–Z, so they can be typed on any phone.

The old Philippine script and Pangasinan

Before Latin letters spread in Spanish times, the peoples of Luzon wrote in the Philippine script family best known by its Tagalog name, baybayin, and the script was also known in the Pangasinan area. Each letter is a consonant with the vowel a (ᜉ pa, ᜐ sa); a mark above changes the vowel to e or i (ᜐᜒ si), a mark below to o or u (ᜐᜓ su), and the vowels ᜀ ᜁ ᜂ stand alone. The cross ᜔, a later addition, cancels the vowel, so a word like asin (salt) can be written ᜀᜐᜒᜈ᜔.

Unicode encodes the script in the Tagalog block, so the letters in the symbol grid above serve for Pangasinan words too. ᜍ ra was added in Unicode 14.0 (2021) for writers who keep r apart from d, and the Philippine punctuation marks ᜵ and ᜶ sit in the neighbouring Hanunoo block; Tagalog uses only ᜶. Fonts such as Noto Sans Tagalog display them all; on a device without such a font they may show as empty boxes.

How to type ñ and ₱

Philippine computers and phones use the ordinary US keyboard, so Pangasinan needs only two extra characters. 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 keyboard's currency symbols, or copy it from this page. Many people simply write P or PHP before the amount, as in ₱50 or P50.

Where Pangasinan is spoken

Pangasinan, also called Pangasinense, is the language of the central and eastern parts of Pangasinan province on the Lingayen Gulf, in places such as Lingayen, Dagupan, Calasiao, San Carlos and Manaoag, and of Pangasinan communities in neighbouring provinces; Ilocano-speaking inhabitants also live in the province. CLDR estimates about 1.7 million speakers in the Philippines 🇵🇭. The name comes from asin, salt: Pangasinan is the place where salt is made, after the salt beds along its coast. The informal name Pangalatok is also heard, but speakers usually call their language simply Pangasinan.

Pangasinan is a language of its own, not a dialect of Tagalog or Ilocano; it belongs to the Southern Cordilleran group with Ibaloy, Kalanguya, Karaw and Ilongot. It was one of the twelve languages chosen when the Philippines began teaching in the mother tongue in the early grades in 2012. See the Filipino, Ilocano and Kapampangan collections for its neighbours, the Philippines collection for the country's emoji, and the Spanish one for the ñ they all borrowed.