With roughly 180 distinct languages spoken across its myriad islands, the Philippines stands as one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. That’s right, it’s not just Tagalog—while Tagalog, or its standardized version, Filipino, is used as a national lingua franca, most people in the Philippines speak a local language at home and in their community. Today, we’re taking a look at one of these minority Philippine languages: Kankanaey.
Kankanaey boasts a speaker base of about 240,000 people, so while it doesn’t quite have the presence of Tagalog or Cebuano, it’s still a relatively major language in the multilingual mosaic of the Philippines. However, like many other minority languages in the Philippines, it’s overshadowed by Tagalog and Ilocano, the dominant regional language in the area. That’s why many translation agencies neglect Kankanaey, offering only Tagalog and Ilocano instead. But here at TranslationServices.com, we’re committed to linguistic diversity, which is why we’re proud to translate to and from Kankanaey.
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Diving into the intricacies of Kankanaey
You’ll find most speakers of Kankanaey in northern Luzon, the northernmost major island in the Philippine archipelago. More precisely, Kankanaey speakers mostly live in the Cordillera Administrative Region, specifically in the provinces of Benguet and Mountain Province. More speakers may be found in parts of Ilocos Sur, La Union, Ifugao, and Abra. The language is divided into “hard-speaking Kankanaey” and “soft-speaking Kankanaey,” which are essentially dialects that differ in pronunciation and sometimes vocabulary. Kankanaey also bears resemblance to the more regionally dominant Ilocano language, with which it shares a slight degree of mutual intelligibility.
Like most other languages that dot the islands of the Philippines, Kankanaey is a grammatically complex language full of complicated inflection patterns. Prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes abound, with prefixes and suffixes appended to the beginning or end of a word, respectively, while infixes are inserted in the middle of a word and circumfixes consist of multiple parts that surround a root word. Kankanaey also makes heavy use of reduplication, a grammatical strategy common in Austronesian languages, where part or all of the word is repeated to modify the meaning. Since our Kankanaey translators are native speakers, they understand the subtleties of all these complexities, so you can rest assured your translation is in good hands.
Bringing quality Kankanaey translation services to anyone
Are you looking for translation into Kankanaey or from Kankanaey? Whichever direction you want to work with, our passionate translation team is eager to assist. Our translators are native speakers of Kankanaey who grew up in Mountain Province, Benguet, Ilocos Sur, Ifugao, Abra, and elsewhere in Luzon and the broader Philippines, and they’re passionate about helping bridge the linguistic gap between the Kankanaey people and the wider world. With Kankanaey translators from a broad geographical range, we ensure coverage of the various dialects of this Philippine language.
Our diverse translation team also enables us to translate projects from various domains. Say you’re an academic researcher looking to connect with Kankanaey speakers for your latest study. Or maybe you’re an ambitious business owner eying the Kankanaey-speaking region for the expansion of your company. Or could it be that you’re an artist or writer looking to share your native Kankanaey-language works with the wider world—or bring your English-language works to the Kankanaey people? Whatever your translation project, our team is eager to support you with our carefully tailored Kankanaey translation services, customized to fit your individual needs. We even have translators with specialty knowledge in a variety of fields—simply ask if you need an expert in your domain!
Now’s the time to take advantage of great Kankanaey translation services. Order now!