Botolan language

Botolan
Botolan Sambal
Native to	Philippines
Region	some parts of Zambales province, Luzon
Native speakers	33,000 (2000)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Central Luzon Sambalic Botolan
Official status
Regulated by	Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	boto1242
Area where Botolan Sambal is spoken according to Ethnologue
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Botolan is a Sambalic language spoken by 32,867 (SIL 2000) Sambal, primarily in the Zambal municipalities of Botolan and Cabangan in the Philippines.

The Ayta people of sitio Villar, Botolan, and sitio Kakilingan, Santa Fe, Cabangan also speak a Botolan dialect with some unique lexical items.

Botolan has 20 phonemes: 16 consonants and four vowels. Syllable structure is relatively simple. Each syllable contains at least a consonant and a vowel.

Botolan has four vowels. They are:

There are five main diphthongs: /aɪ/, /uɪ/, /aʊ/, /ij/, and /iʊ/.

Below is a chart of Botolan consonants. All the stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions including at the beginning of a word.

Note: Consonants /d/ and /ɾ/ can sometimes interchange as they were once allophones.

Stress is phonemic in Botolan. Stress on words is very important, they differentiate words with the same spellings, but with different meanings, e.g. hikó (I) and híko (elbow).

Many words pronounced with /s/ and /ɡ/ in Filipino have /h/ and /j/, respectively, in their cognates in Botolan. Compare hiko and bayo with the Filipino siko and bago.