Itawis language
Northern Philippine language
Itawis (also Itawit or Tawit as the endonym) is a Northern Philippine language spoken by the Itawis people, closely related to the Gaddang speech found in Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya. It also has many similarities to the neighboring Ibanag tongue, while remaining quite different from the prevalent Ilocano spoken in the region and the Tagalog-based Filipino national language.
Background
Itawis is spoken by the Itawis people of Northern Luzon who inhabit the provinces of Cagayan Valley. Their range is from the lower Chico and Matalag rivers. The language is said to have rooted in the town of Tuao. In many towns by these rivers, Itawis are found with the Ibanags, and speak Ibanag as well, as an example of linguistic adaptation. Speakers of Itawis and Ibanag can easily understand each other because of the close relationship of their languages. The Itawis are linguistically and culturally very closely related to the Ibanag.
The Itawis language is classified as a Malayo-Polynesian language, a subset of the Austronesian language superfamily. During the pre-colonial period of the Philippines, words were borrowed from Spanish to stand in place for words that did not exist in the Itawis language.
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This entry incorporates text from “Itawis language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.