Grammar

Romblomanon, as are other Malayo-Polynesian languages, is agglutinative. Verbs consist of roots onto which are attached prefixes, infixes, suffixes and discontinuous affixes. In addition, reduplication and doubling function as affixes. An attempt is made in this dictionary to display parts of speech on the basis of affixes that derive them and verb patterns on the basis of affixes that inflect them.

Example Sentences

Example sentences are used to illustrate typical grammatical, semantic and cultural contexts of specific senses of lexical forms being described. Almost all examples are from natural texts. Some examples are slightly adapted from their occurrence in natural textual context. This is considered necessary to allow them to stand alone, to aid in sentence understanding, or to limit sentence length. Only words that do not seem to affect the grammatical structure or basic meaning of the sentence have either been added or omitted. For the most part additions involve substituting proper nouns for personal pronouns. In cases where it seemed that the English translation of sentences would not be clearly understood, or to conform to English grammar, additions in the translation were included within square brackets, based on the textual context from which the examples were taken.

Maskin ˆang ˆãkun nadangãtan hay kahugaˆ kag makakahuyaˆ nga ˆikspiryinsya hay maˆãyu da gihãpun. Even though what was experienced by me was difficult and [it was] an embarrassing experience [of being examined by a male doctor], [it] was still good.
The addition [of being examined by a male doctor] is textual context involving a woman being examined by a male doctor. The additions [it was] and [it] are included in consideration of English grammar.
The lexical form being illustrated within the Romblomanon sentence is boldfaced. The English translation of that lexical form is also boldfaced within the sentence translation. This is done to identify the translation of the lexical form being illustrated. Boldfacing the translation of the lexical form also demonstrates agreement between that translation and the gloss proper of the lexical gloss that is also boldfaced. (See above, Translation Equivalents and Lexical Descriptions, last paragraph.)
Usage and Context
Grammatical notes are added within square brackets to aid in identifying the natural grammatical context for the lexical form being described.
nãtun poss adj pron ... [Post-noun or post-gerund possessive pronoun. For pre-noun or pre-gerund possessive pronoun, see ˆãtun 1a.]
Semantic and cultural notes are added within braces to aid in an understanding of how the lexical item is used within the semantic and cultural contexts.
Semantic note:
býyuk nang niyug n an unopened coconut inflorescence {Enclosed within a spathe ˆuyu with male and female flowers, stem tangãya 1a and branches byayýbay.}
Cultural notes:
panagˆãraw n second-crop season ....{The season for planting, tending and harvesting second-crop rice.}
býˆungvSomeonebreakssomethingintopieces.....{Speechofolderpeople.}

Senses

Senses of lexical items are semantic rather than grammatical features. Some nouns, adjectives and/or verbs are described within a single sense and others involve sense differences. For example kagwãpa is either a noun “beauty” or an adjective “beautiful”. Both functions are described under a single sense. In contrast hãbaˆ is a noun: “the length of something”. It is also a verb: “An object becomes long”. In this case the noun and verb are separated as two senses.
Numbers and letters are used to identify contrastive senses of lexical forms. These contrasts may be accompanied by modification of the entry form, though not necessarily so. Indicating senses is a somewhat subjective matter. The intent is to group under a single sense semantic usage of the form that has a relatively uniform meaning and to exclude meanings that are judged sufficiently different to warrant indication of a separate sense. If two senses are judged to be quite close in meaning, they are separated by, for example, 1a and 1b. If they are judged not to be close in meaning, they are separated by 1, 2, etc.
pintýra 1a n paint 1b v A surface is painted by someone.
dãhan 1 v Someone does something carefully, slowly, is careful in doing something. 2 v Someone is given care or respect by someone.
plÿti 1a v Someone pays the fare for or rents something. 1bpagplÿti (varplÿti) nafareforridingonor carrying something on a vehicle
When the first sense is a generic and the second is some modification of it, the first sense is indicated by a number and the second sense by a number-letter combination.
pýkut 1 n a fishnet 1a naylun nga pýkut n a nylon line fishnet

Senses of concrete meanings generally occur within the entry before senses of abstract meanings, and senses of simpler forms occur before those of more complex forms. Senses of derivations generally occur before those of idioms and set expressions.

Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words

Synonyms are words with the same lexical meaning, though they may vary in some feature of grammatical, semantic or cultural context.
pantyun n a burial vault syn nitsu
Antonyms are words that are judged to be more-or-less opposite in meaning.
buyag 1a v Someone or something leaves someone or something else; people or things separate from each other. ant nunut
nunut v Someone accompanies someone else or joins someone else in an activity. ant buyag la
Words too semantically different to be labeled synonyms but which share some close meaning relationship are cross referenced for purposes of meaning comparisons. Read “cf” as “compare”.
sapaˆ 1 n a seasonal creek cf subaˆ
subaˆ n a river; a marshy area cf sapaˆ 1
Etymology
No attempt has been made to indicate origins of words not clearly of Romblomanon origin. The language has borrowed heavily from Spanish. Other language sources include other Bisayan languages, Tagalog and English.