Tausug Language Guide

Official language in
Philippines
Also spoken in
Malaysia
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

An article in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association says that Tausug is spoken on the island of Jolo in the southwestern Philippines and is found on other nearby islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines. The same article says that it is also spoken in parts of Sabah, Malaysia, where it is called Suluk.

A review of Tausug linguistics says that the language serves as the lingua franca in the Sulu archipelago and neighboring islands. The same review says that Bahasa Sug, literally the "language of Sulu", is the rightful term for the language according to the compiler of one dictionary, while the term Tausug refers to the people. This app labels the language Tausug.

The Philippine Constitution makes Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English the official languages, and the regional languages the auxiliary official languages in the regions. The Unicode CLDR data records Tausug in the Philippines with the status official_regional.

Sources

Script & pronunciation

The SIL Tausug–English dictionary describes a practical orthography in which, for the most part, there is a one-to-one relationship between sounds and written symbols. In it, the alveopalatal nasal is written ny, the velar nasal is written ng, the voiceless affricate is written ch, and the voiced affricate is written j. The dictionary says that Tausug has only three vowel phonemes, a, i and u, and that it writes u rather than o, because the difference between the two sounds is not distinctive in Tausug.

In the dictionary's orthography, a glottal stop between vowels is written with no symbol, and elsewhere it is written with an apostrophe, as in kura' ("horse"). This app's cards use the same apostrophe, as in Di' makaun sin Muslim in sapi' bang bukun siyumbay' ("Muslims don't eat beef if it isn't ceremonially slaughtered"). The dictionary also mentions the Arabic (Jawi) script, which the Tausug call "sulat Sūg". This app's Tausug cards carry no separate romanization.

Sources

Grammar essentials

The dictionary's grammar notes describe small words called relators. In its example Kiyaun sin iru' in ista' ("The fish was eaten by the dog"), the relator in marks ista' ("fish") as the topic, and the relator sin marks the non-topic agent. The dictionary lists ha as the relator for an oblique phrase.

In the dictionary's examples, the predicate comes first and the phrase marked by in follows it, as in Ikaw in bagay ku ("You are my friend"), where the predicate slot is filled by ikaw. The app's card for Maunu-unu kaw bihaun? ("How are you today?") notes a predicate-initial order, and the card Puti' in badju' sin manga bata' maggraduwit ("The dresses of the children graduating are white") begins with the adjective puti' ("white"), which its grammar note puts first.

The dictionary says that verbs are obligatorily inflected for time-aspect, focus and mode, as in Naglawag siya iban ("He searched for a companion").

The dictionary lists di' ("not") among the adverbs used for negation, as in the card Di' makaun sin Muslim in sapi' bang bukun siyumbay' ("Muslims don't eat beef if it isn't ceremonially slaughtered"). It lists ka as an interrogation adverb, glossed "question".

The dictionary's chart of personal pronouns gives kaw, mu, kaymu and ikaw as the singular forms for the hearer, used in different phrase types. The app's card Maunu-unu kaw bihaun? uses kaw, and its card Hisiyu in ngan mu? ("What is your name?") uses mu.

Sources

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