Casiguran Dumagat Agta, also known as Casiguran Agta (after the endonym Agta, the name which the people call themselves and their language), is a Northeastern Luzon language spoken in the northern Philippines. It is spoken by around 610 speakers,[2] most of whom live in the San Ildefonso Peninsula, across the bay from Casiguran, Aurora.

Casiguran Agta
Casiguran Dumagat
Native toPhilippines
RegionLuzon
EthnicityAgta
Native speakers
(610 cited 1989)[1]
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3dgc
Glottologcasi1235
ELPCasiguran Dumagat Agta

The language was first documented in 1936 by Christian missionaries. There are many surviving works of Father Morice Vanoverbergh that document the language. Although the language has gone through rapid cultural change since his early work, the Father's writings still give a window of insight into what the language and the culture of the people was.[3] Since then it has been continually documented by the late SIL linguists Thomas and Janet Headland.[4] A New Testament translation was published in 1979, titled Bigu a Tipan: I mahusay a baheta para ta panahun tam.[5] Among the languages spoken by Philippine "Negrito" populations, Casiguran Dumagat Agta has been one of the most extensively studied.[6][page needed]

Casiguran Dumagat is closely related to Dupaningan Agta, Pahanan Agta (near Palanan town), Paranan (the non-Agta language of Palanan town), and Dinapigue Agta. A speech variety called Nagtipunan Agta was discovered by Jason Lobel and Laura Robinson in Nagtipunan, Quirino in 2006.[4][7]

Casiguran Agta has been described as having eight vowel sounds, compared to the usual four in most Philippine languages.[8]

Notes

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  1. ^ Casiguran Agta at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Headland, Thomas N. (2003). "Thirty endangered languages in the Philippines" (PDF). Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota. 47. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 December 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  3. ^ Headland, Thomas N. (1975). "The Casiguran Dumagats Today and in 1936". Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society. 3 (4): 245–257. ISSN 0115-0243. JSTOR 29791218.
  4. ^ a b Lobel 2013, p. 88.
  5. ^ Bigu a tipan: I mahusay a baheta para ta panahun tam. Wycliffe. 1979. Retrieved 15 November 2017 – via bible.com.
  6. ^ Lobel 2013.
  7. ^ Robinson 2008, p. 55.
  8. ^ Robinson 2008, p. 21.

References

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  • Lobel, Jason William (2013). Philippine and North Bornean Languages: Issues in Description, Subgrouping, and Reconstruction (PhD thesis). University of Hawaii at Manoa. hdl:10125/101972.
  • Robinson, Laura C. (2008). Dupaningan Agta: Grammar, Vocabulary, and Texts (PhD thesis). University of Hawaii at Manoa. hdl:10125/20681.
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