INTRODUCTION

Buhi is one of the towns in the province of Camarines Sur in Bikol Region. The Buhi

dialect, commonly known as ‘Boînən’ (or Buhi-non for non-speakers) and mainly spoken in

the town of Buhi, belongs to the group of Rinconada dialects. The others are Bula, Baao,

Nabua, Bato and Iriga.

Boînən is considered by many Bikolanos quite different from the other Bikol dialects

and it carries some peculiar sounds which non-Buhinons find difficult to learn. According to

popular knowledge, the inhabitants of Buhi were those who escaped from the eruptions of

Mayon Volcano who were from Albay and other towns affected by the volcanic eruptions.

Hence, Boînən is a mixture of Bikol dialects mainly influenced by the dialects of Albay and

Rinconada. The inhabitants cannot give explanation of the origin of the peculiar sounds of

Buhi dialect that which makes it unique among all other Bikol dialects. Portugal (1999?)

devised certain symbols to represent these sounds and there are already native speakers

who adapted her symbols in their writings. They are used both in the phonemic

transcriptions and orthography of Buhi words. Lobel (2000), however, used an IPA symbol

to represent these peculiar sounds. McFarland used a barred ‘g’ - a non IPA symbol (Pikes)

but it is the equivalent to IPA’s / / vd. velar fricative. These sounds, nonetheless, have also

similarities in dialects spoken in Iloilo, Aklan and the Ilocos; and no invented symbols were

necessary to represent the peculiar sounds. Since, the invented symbol used by Portugal

has to be written manually, I would rather adopt the symbols used by Lobel. Moreover, the

latter justified that “it is a / / voiced velar fricative, or close enough that it does not need an

invented symbol; but it does need a symbol.”

I. Listing of phonemes in Boînən

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A. There are 26 sounds in Boînən, 15 of which are consonants, 4 are vowels and

7 are diphthongs. /w/ and /y/ are either semivowels or semiconsonants. /h/

sound does not occur in this dialect and // sound occurs in its place in the

initial position; and yet, the name of the town ‘Buhi’ has an /h/ sound and this

is a single case.

Phoneme Boînən English Translation

fatigue

 new

calm

path

retrieve

əə  cut

    that, pick

 like

 smaller mosquito

laugh

   destroy

 who

slow

mess up

  falling

 snake

 imitate

  

 

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THE CONSONANT CHART

1.) The unvoiced stops /p/, /t/ and /k/ are unaspirated.

2.) /t/, /d/, /s/, /n/ and /l/ are dental consonants, not alveolar as in English,

LABIAL DENTAL PALATAL VELAR GLOTTAL

PLOSIVES


FRICATIVES

NASALS
LATERALS

FLAP

GLIDES

because the tongue touches the back of the teeth in the Buhi articulation.

3.) /r/ is a flap not a retroflex or trilled. It’s the Tagalog /r/.

4.) / / is a voiced velar fricative particular of Buhi language.

5.) Sounds which are foreign to Boînən and are borrowings from Spanish and

English are:

/ /which becomes /sy/, e.g: ‘estacion1’  /estasyon (station)

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The Spanish pronunciation is / stasj / or / /; but it is modified according to our way of saying it. It is
spelled ‘estasyon’ but commonly pronounced as transcribed above.

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 // /ts/, e.g. ‘chinelas’ //tsinelas2 (slippers)

// 
, e.g. English hospital → Buhi ospital ‘hospital’

// → /s/, e.g. Spanish lapiz → Buhi lapis ‘pencil’

/v/ → /b/, e.g. Spanish calvo → Buhi kalbo ‘bald’

/f/ → /p/, e.g. Spanish freno → Buhi preno ‘brake’

The Vowel System

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

HIGH   
MID 
  

LOW 
Boînən has a four-vowel system. Portugal (?) claims that her dialect has a

schwa sound /ə/ instead of the common // in the Philippine languages. While Lobel

(2000) and Yamada (2002) consider the sound in question as pĕpĕt but both use the

symbol /ə/ to represent it. After listening to native speakers of Boînən, I think it is more

like a pĕpĕt rather than a schwa sound. Moreover, Conant (1912) stated in his studies

that this original indifferent vowel (pĕpĕt //) existed in Philippine languages and has

“evolved into various and more or less definite vowel sounds.” Bikol is one of these

languages and Boînən has retained the // sound. Reid (1973) has also written on this

pĕpĕt vowel and its reflexes in Bikol.

The [u] sound is an allophone of the phoneme //. Portugal absolutely abstains

from the use of /u/ in her orthography unless it appears in a loanword. Nevertheless,

Lobel and Yamada use them occasionally.

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This is the orthography for ‘slippers’ but commonly pronounced as transcribed above. Like Tagalog, Buhi dialect
does not have the / / sound but have adopted it because of loanwords. However, the orthography adopts the local
way using (ts).

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B. The Diphthongs

 ‘to shout’
‘sound of plunging water’
‘to tip’

  ‘headache’
 ‘to snatch’

‘soot’
 ‘to look back’
‘spurting water’

‘to give’
‘eyebrow’
‘sit beside’
‘align’

  ‘to sail’
     ‘limp’

‘whistle’
‘palm leaf’
‘straight’

The seven Boînən diphthongs are not a combination of two vowels but a

vowel and a semivowel (/w/ or /y/).

Portugal ( ?), in her book Buhi Dialect, noted seven more diphthongs that

are combinations of vowels and the peculiar Buhi sound. She invented the

symbol / / which represents the semivowel / semiconsonant of the vowel

nucleus and formed 7 more diphthongs. On the other hand, Lobel (2000)

considered the unique sound as a voiced velar fricative //; hence, a consonant.

I think that it sounds more like // whose sound is close to /g/ and /l/.

C. Consonant Clusters

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 Consonant clusters exist in the Buhi dialect but they are Spanish loan

words and the orthography is changed according to Buhi phonological

system. Nonetheless, the /e/ which is not naturally part of its vowel system is

retained. There are also limited consonant clusters which are originally

Boînən; namely,  ‘of that’ ‘of this’ ‘before, then’.

‘fried’

‘plate’

‘plate’

 ‘rug’

‘towel’
Initial position
Medial position
 ‘arm’
‘contract’
‘blouse’
‘congress’
 ‘widow’
‘pupil’
‘cream’
‘to add flavor’
‘class’
‘conclusion’
‘money’

‘kiosk’

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 ‘drama’

‘dwarf’

‘faucet’

‘glory’

‘gloves’

II. Identical Pairs

There are identical pairs in this dialect which differs in meaning

because of the stress; therefore, it can be considered that stress is phonemic.

1. a’b ‘ash’ ab   ‘eat’ (derogatory)

2. sa:la ‘living room’ sala ‘one’s mistake, fault’ sa’la ‘wrong’

3. b ‘water the plants’   ‘pour’

4. a’k‘I’  ‘accept’

5.   ‘kamias fruit’ ‘  ‘join’

6. a’di ‘this’ ‘ ‘king’



7.   ‘therefore’ ‘capable’

8.   ‘turn’ ‘elbow’

9.   ‘throw up’  ‘vinegar’

Vowel length and stress are phonemics because they are not

predictable and they are not conditioned by their environments. The shift of stress in

the word indicates a change in meaning.

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III. The peculiar Boînən sounds // and // or //

For some, especially for those who would try to compile a dictionary of

Boînən, this dialect has an “exotic” sound // which does not exactly match with any

letter in an ordinary alphabet. Hence, it is an initial problem on how to write or

transcribe this language. Moreover, Buhinons and linguists doing researches on

this language do not agree on the way some Boînən words should be written.

Claveria (2002) affirms that Buhinon indeed contains what has been called “exotic”

sounds which cannot be written phonetically with the characters of the ordinary

alphabet. However, he asserts that as a Buhinon, he does not quite understand why

they are called exotic. In fact, he stated that it may be exotic to others but not to

Buhinons themselves . He also added that it should be possible to represent the

so-called exotic sounds without adding new symbols to the ordinary alphabet. It has

been proposed that an inverted ‘e’ be used to represent the schwa or neutral vowel

sound for Buhinon. But if this sound is represented in English, he maintained that,

we could do the same thing in writing Buhinon. He added that the advantages of

using the ordinary alphabet in writing Buhinon are obvious. One would not need a

special kind of typewriter or word processor. One does not need to leave spaces for

“exotic” sounds to be filled in by hand later, when he is using an ordinary machine,

as proposed by Portugal. Therefore, it is possible to write Buhinon using only the

symbols in the ordinary alphabet.

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 I have gathered a list of Buhi words with the particular // sound; they are shown

side by side with Standard Bikol and Tagalog in the following table. I intend to make a

comparison between the Bikol words and Buhinon where // occurs. I shall continue

on this work before the end of this trimester.

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