- Also spoken in
- Philippines
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
The Defense Language Institute's Maranao course says that Maranao is spoken by the ethnolinguistic group of the same name in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines. It adds that the Maranao are known as the people of the lake, because most of their settlements are around Lake Lanao, and that "lake" is Ranaw in Maranao.
The course describes Maranao as closely related to Iranun and Maguindanaon, the three together forming the Danao subgroup. Unlike Maguindanaon, Maranao has very little variation from one place to another, which the course says is probably partly due to the geography. It also says that Maranaos can usually be observed speaking their own language among themselves even in the presence of non-Maranaos, and that almost all of them are also fluent in Tagalog, Cebuano, and even English. One of this app's cards, Makapaginglis ka ba? ("Can you speak English?"), asks that question in Maranao.
Sources
- Alonto, Almahdi G.; Adam, Abdullah B.; Zorc, R. David (2009). Maranao Dialogs and Drills, ed. Jason Lobel. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center / Dunwoody Press — Introduction, "The Maranao Language" (p. i) and "People and Places" (pp. ii–iii)
Script & pronunciation
The Defense Language Institute's course uses a simple spelling that it says corresponds to the one in most of the available Maranao dictionaries and literacy materials. It has 20 letters (15 consonants and 5 vowels), and the glottal stop is not written. The vowels a, i, o and u generally correspond to their equivalents in Tagalog or Spanish, while e represents the schwa, as in English "but". The consonants have the same values as in Tagalog. This app's cards are written in this kind of spelling, as in Salamat reka ("Thank you"), and they show the Maranao text only; none of them carries a separate romanization.
The course adds that a rather different spelling is used in most publications by native Maranao sources, such as the Maranao interpretation of the Qur'an, Islamic books and pamphlets, and music videos. That spelling adds four aspirated consonants, written th, kh, ph, and z or sh.
Sources
- Alonto, Almahdi G.; Adam, Abdullah B.; Zorc, R. David (2009). Maranao Dialogs and Drills, ed. Jason Lobel. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center / Dunwoody Press — Introduction, "Maranao Spelling and Phonology" (p. i)
Grammar essentials
Daniel Kaufman's study of Maranao clitics describes a canonical Maranao sentence as predicate-initial. In his examples, the first full word of the predicate, such as the verb, carries the subject pronoun clitic after it, and the pronoun cannot attach to a following phrase. The app's card Makapaginglis ka ba? ("Can you speak English?") has the same shape, with ka ("you") right after the verb.
Kaufman also says that when a negative word is the first element of the clause, it carries the pronoun clitic in the same way. The app's card Di ako makasebot ("I don't understand") puts ako ("I") right after Di. In the Defense Language Institute course, the drill on the negatives Da and Di answers questions about the present, the future, and qualities with Di, and questions about the past and about possessions with Da. A separate drill in the course is titled "Use of Da, negative possessive". The app's card Da a pirak aken ("I have no money") begins with Da.
Kaufman's table of Maranao pronouns lists ka as the singular "you" in the nominative clitic set and kano as the plural, and reka and rekano as the singular and plural "you" in the free oblique set. The app's card Salamat reka ("Thank you") uses reka.
Sources
- Kaufman, Daniel (2010). "The grammar of clitics in Maranao." In Billings & Goudswaard (eds.), Piakandatu ami Dr. Howard P. McKaughan, pp. 179–204. Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL Philippines — §2.1 (pp. 182–183); Table 1 (p. 180)
- Alonto, Almahdi G.; Adam, Abdullah B.; Zorc, R. David (2009). Maranao Dialogs and Drills, ed. Jason Lobel. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center / Dunwoody Press — Drill 7 "Use of Negatives Da, Di"; Drill 8.4
Politeness & etiquette
The Defense Language Institute's course says that Muslims, and even non-Muslims if comfortable doing so, can greet each other with the Arabic phrase assalamu alaykum ("Peace be upon you"), whose response is (wa)alaykumi salam, basically meaning "And peace upon you, too". It adds that other greetings, such as "good morning" or "hello", are perfectly acceptable, especially from non-Muslim outsiders. The app has cards for both halves of the exchange: Assalamu Alaykum ("Peace be upon you") and Waalaykumi Salam ("And peace be upon you, too").
The course also says that men may greet women with a smile and kind words but not with a handshake, and that men greet each other with a handshake after which the hand is moved towards the heart.
Sources
- Alonto, Almahdi G.; Adam, Abdullah B.; Zorc, R. David (2009). Maranao Dialogs and Drills, ed. Jason Lobel. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center / Dunwoody Press — Introduction, "People and Places" (p. iii)