Introduction

The majority of Agutaynen words which appear in this dictionary were collected on the island of Agutaya between the years 1990 and 2004. Therefore many of the example sentences reflect the way of life on the island and do not necessarily represent life in Agutaynen communities on mainland Palawan. Likewise, entries which describe traditional beliefs and practices do not necessarily reflect the current beliefs of all Agutaynens. Instead, an effort has been made to document the culture and language by including these traditional practices, archaic (old) words, and drawings of items unique to the culture, but which are rarely seen these days.

The inclusion of English definitions, English translations of example sentences, and the English-Agutaynen Index will hopefully be of help to high school and college students, as well as others who wish to increase their knowledge of English.

In recent years, some English and Tagalog words have found their way into the everyday vocabulary of Agutaynens and therefore are included in the dictionary, although with Agutaynen spelling. For example, the English word ‘bright’ (intelligent) is spelled ‘brait’. The Tagalog word ‘tubos’ (redeem) is spelled ‘tobos’.

There are also numerous words of Spanish origin which appear in the dictionary. Since these words have been completely assimilated into the language, no attempt has been made to note their origin. Words for the dictionary were collected from a variety of sources including audio recordings of local stories, personal letters, native authored literature, hortatory, explanatory and narrative texts, elicitation of words in semantic domains, as well as everyday conversations with people.

Even so, there are many more Agutaynen words which are not included in this volume. It is hoped that in the future the database can be expanded, along with the addition of Filipino/Tagalog equivalents. For now, it is hoped that this dictionary, together with the Grammar Sketch, will provide a small window through which both Agutaynens and non-Agutaynens can glimpse the beauty and uniqueness of the Agutaynen language.

This dictionary is dedicated to the memory of Marilyn A. (Lingkoy) Caabay, who with Josenita L. (Inday) Edep, spent many hours at our home going over the vocabulary.

There is still much work to do, but we have decided to publish this work-in-progress, in order to document the work we have done so far. Please leave comments in the Message box on the Contacts page.