Maranao language

Maranaoan
Mëranaw
Pronunciation	[ˈmәranaw]
Native to	Philippines
Region	twin provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur
Ethnicity	Maranao people
Native speakers	(780,000 cited 1990 census)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Mindanao Danao Maranaoan
Writing system	Latin; Historically written in Arabic
Official status
Official language in	Regional language in the Philippines
Regulated by	Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	mara1404
Area where Maranao is spoken

Maranaoan (Mëranaw [ˈmәranaw]) is an Austronesian language spoken by the Maranao people in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur in the Philippines, and in Sabah, Malaysia.

Iranun was once considered a dialect.

Unique among other Danao languages, Maranaoan is spoken with a distinct downstep accent, as opposed to stress accent.

Maranao is spoken in the following areas (Ethnologue).

Maranaoan was historically written in Arabic letters, which were known as Batang Arab. It is now written with Latin letters.

A, B, D, AE/Ë, E, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, NG, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Y

"AE", also spelled as "Ë", is pronounced as /ə/.

Double vowels are pronounced separately. For example, "kapaar" is pronounced as /kapaʔaɾ/.

However, in some orthographies, "q" is used for the glottal stop regardless of position, and "di" is used to transcribe the /d͡ʒ/ sound, such as "radia" (from the Sanskrit word for "king", "Rāja").

"H" is only used for Malay loanwords.

Below is the sound system of Mëranaw including underlying phonetic features.

According to Lobel (2013), [h] only occurs in a select number of Malay loanwords:

Consonants are also pronounced longer if preceded with a schwa ə. However, this process is not a form of gemination since consonant elongation in Mëranaw is not distinctive as seen in other Philippine languages such as Ilokano and Ibanag. Some of these are: