Ivatan language

The Ivatan (Ibatan) language, also known as Chirin nu Ibatan ("language of the Ivatan people"), is an Austronesian language spoken in the Batanes Islands.

Although the islands are closer to Taiwan than to Luzon, it is not one of the Formosan languages. Ivatan is one of the Batanic languages, which are perhaps a primary branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family of Austronesian languages.

The language of Babuyan Island is a dialect. Babuyan was depopulated by the Spanish and only repopulated at the end of the Spanish era with families from Batan Island.

Ivatan is especially characterized by its words, which mostly have the letter v, as in vakul, Ivatan, and valuga. The letter e is pronounced as the schwa oun, or uh, as in Dios Mamajes, 'di-yos-ma-ma-huhs', and palek 'pa-luhk'. While related to the Northern Philippine group of languages, Ivatan, having been isolated, is most close to the two other members of the Bashiic sub-group of languages, Yami (Tao) and Itbayat, neither of which is indigenous to Luzon. Ibatan, spoken on the nearby Babuyan group of islands, is so similar to Ivatan that it is not entirely clear whether it should be classified as a dialect of Ivatan or a separate language, though each does receive its own code in ISO taxonomy.

Supporting separate listings is that Ibatan is 31% mutual intelligible with Basco Ivatan, the standard form of the language. With Basco Ivatan, more commonly known as Ivasayen, an adjective denoting the Ivasayen people who inhabit the main island of Batan, and Itbayaten, derived from Itbayat, the name for the northernmost of the three islands, is a third dialect, Isamurongen, a dialect with a vocabulary identical to Ivasayen spoken on the southern half of Batan and on the most southern island, Sabtang.

As implied, notable variation exists in spoken Ivatan although Batanes makes up roughly 200  and is home to only 18,000 inhabitants. Examination of the linguistic zones suggests that this is best explained by Batanes being composed of three islands rather than a single landmass, as these linguistic divisions roughly follow geographic ones, the notable exception being Isamurongen which is spoken on not only Sabtang, but Batan as well.

Perhaps this explanation can be seen most clearly in the differences in the dialects themselves, where lexical variation is insignificant, but phonological variation, often indicative of geographic isolation, is highly pronounced; The late advent of writing, which might have standardized pronunciation prior to divergence, could have also been a factor.