Kankanaey People's and Language

People's

The Kankanaey live in western Mountain Province, northern Benguet and southeastern Ilocos Sur. They speak Kankanaey. Like most Igorot ethnic groups, the Kankanaey built sloping terraces to maximize farm space in the rugged terrain of the Cordillera. The Kankanaey of western Mountain Province from the municipalities of Sagada and Besao identify themselves as part of a tribe called Applai or Aplai. Two famous institutions of the Kankanaey of Mountain Province are the dap-ay and the ebgan.

The Kankanaey differ in the way they dress. The women soft-speaking Kankanaey's dress has a color combination of black, white and red. The design of the upper attire is a criss-crossed style of black, white and red colors. The skirt or tapis is a combination of stripes of black, white and red. The women hard-speaking Kankanaey's dress is composed of mainly red and black with a little white styles, as for the skirt or tapis which is mostly called bakget and gateng. The men wore a g-string as it is called but it is mainly known as wanes for the Kanakaney's of Besao and Sagada. The design of the wanes may vary according to social status or municipality.

The Kankanaey's major dances include tayaw, pattong, takik, a wedding dance, and balangbang. The tayaw is a community dance that is usually done in weddings it maybe also danced by the Ibaloi but has a different style. Pattong, also a community dance from Mountain Province which every municipality has its own style. Balangbang is the modernized word for the word Pattong. There are also some other dance that the Kankanaey's dance like the sakkuting, pinanyuan(wedding dance)and bogi-bogi(courtship dance). Kankanaey houses are built like the other Igorot houses, which reflect their social status.

The name Kankanaey came from the language which they speak. The only difference among the Kankanaey are the way they speak like intonation and the usage of some words. In intonation, there is a hard Kankanaey or Applai and soft Kankanaey. Speakers of hard Kankanaey are from Sagada, Besao and the surrounding parts or barrios of the said two municipalities. They speak Kankanaey hard in intonation where they differ in some words from the soft-speaking Kankanaey. While the soft speaking Kankanaey comes from Northern Benguet, some parts of Benguet, and from the municipalities of Sabangan, Tadian and Bauko from Mountain Province. In words for example an Applai might say otik or beteg (pig) and the soft-speaking Kankanaey may say busaang or beteg as well. The Kankanaey may also differ in some words like egay or aga, maid or maga. They also differ in their ways of life and sometimes in culture.

The Kankanaey are identified by the language they speak and the province form where they come. Kankanaey people from Mountain Province may call the Kankanaey from Benguet as Ibenget because they come from Benguet. Likewise, the Kankanaey of Benguet may call their fellow Kankanaey from Mountain Province Ibontok.

Language

Kankanaey is a language used on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. It is widely used by Cordillerans. specifically people from the Mountain Province and people from the Northern part of the Benguet Province. It is commonly use by the Kankanaey people's.

Phonology

Of particular interest is the very common occurrence of what could be best thought of as a stressed schwa in many words. In fact, the e in Kankanaey is to be pronounced as this sound, and not as the e in words like bet or wet. This sound is usually unstressed and of a very short duration in English, as an intermediary sound between consonant clusters, such as that between the /B/ and the /L/ in the wordtable, or between the /T/ and the /L/ in title. This sound value is similarly found in a few other Northern Luzon languages like Ilocano and Pangasinan.

Some words with this sound are as follows:

emey/umey - to go

entako - let's go (a contracted form of emey tako)

ed - a particle equivalent in function to the relative pronoun where

ipe-ey - to put (something somewhere)

iwed-wed - to shake loose (as in loosening a stick or post)

eng-gay - only, finish

Proud-to-be World is composed of 3 videos consisting an old but popular story about

☺Bugan and Gatan
☺Gatan and Bangan
☺Philippine War

This are stories from a group of the Cordillera known as Kankanaey.


We have also put some examples of Artifacts of the Kankanaey tribe(shown below)

☺ Pak-e
☺Salinggut
☺Duli
☺Gusi
☺Bituto
☺Tupil
☺Atubang

(For Information, please see "KANKANAEY ARTIFACTS")