Batad Ifugao Dictionary with Ethnographic Notes

1. The Ifugao language

The Ifugao language is spoken by a group of people by that name living in the Province of Ifugao and
several surrounding provinces of north-central Luzon, Philippines. About 150,000 people speak this
language as their mother tongue. The Ifugao people are famous for their wet-rice culture in one of the
most mountainous areas of Southeast Asia. This has produced a hardy people who have carved out the
spectacular rice terraces. Many scientists and others have studied and written on the very intricate and
highly developed culture that has developed around this agricultural system. Little, however, has been
done to describe the dialects of these people which have played such a significant role in making this
possible. This dictionary is a description of a selected portion of a dialect of Ifugao spoken by people
living in the Batad Ifugao valley of north-central Ifugao. The valley slopes towards the southeast and is
bounded on three sides by mountain ridges, clearly circumscribing the Batad Ifugao dialect area. The
speakers of this dialect, including those living outside the dialect area, number no more than a few
thousand. However, closely related dialects are spoken across the northern part of the province, down
the eastern side, across the south and in numerous settlement areas in surrounding provinces. A large
number of people living in these areas speak either Batad Ifugao or closely related dialects. About 50,000
people speak a dialect similar to what is described here.

Batad Ifugao Dictionary

with Ethnographic Notes

Compiled by
Leonard E. Newell
Summer Institute of Linguistics

Francis Bon'og Poligon
Ifugao Language Consultant

Foreword by
Harold C Conklin

Copyright 1993 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines
All rights reserved.
ISBN 971-1059-24-X

0693 2.0c

Linguistic Society of the Philippines
Special Monograph Issue, Number 33