Thread: Ilocano

I have received a project that needs to be translated into Ilocano. This is the first time I heard about this language.

Does anyone know who speaks Ilocano?

Some interesting stuff I found researching about this:

Iloko is a member of the Philippine branch of Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken by about 10 million people in the Philippines, mainly in the northwest of Luzon island, and also in Mindanao. There are significant numbers of Iloko speakers in the USA, Middle East, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Canada and Europe as well.
The language is also known as Ilokano, Ilocano, Iluko, Iloco and Iloko, and the Iloko people call themselves Samtoy, a contraction from the Iloko phrase saö mi ditoy, meaning "our language here".
Iloko was originally written with the Baybayin syllabary, which is also used to write Tagalog, but this was gradually replaced by the Latin alphabet the Spanish arrived in the Philippines in the 16th century. One of the first publications in Iloko was the Doctrina Cristiana of 1621.

If you check out the link below you can see how the alphabet looks like and how the ponunciation works: Iloko (Ilocano) language, alphabet and pronunciation

Thanks guys. Can you confirm if the following statement is correct for this language?

The Ilokano structure is Verb +Subject + object (VSO).

According to Wikipedia: Ilokano is typified by a predicate-initial structure. Verbs and adjectives occur in the first position of the sentence, then the rest of the sentence follows.

By the way, "How are you?" is "Kumustakayo?" in Ilokano.

Originally Posted by Maximiliano

According to Wikipedia: Ilokano is typified by a predicate-initial structure. Verbs and adjectives occur in the first position of the sentence, then the rest of the sentence follows.

Thanks Maximiliano. I guess my client had the right idea all along.