By OLIVER SAMSON
IRIGA CITY: Singing icon Nora Aunor,
actors Jaime Fabregas and Rez Cortes, 2010 Miss Universe runner-up Venus Raj,
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Eddie Ilarde, a former assemblyman, senator
and congressman, are Bicolano but they speak Rinconada.
Frank Peñones, Rinconada Dictionary
project head, said the late Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin was fluent in the
language that has persisted through the ages in the peninsula.
“If we go by the out-of-Taiwan theory of Peter
Bellwood, et al., Rinconada may have been spoken as early as 4,000 years ago,”
he said.
“And if by Wilhelm Solheim’s or [Stephen] Oppenheimer’s Sundaland
theory, then it would be much older.”
In his lexicographic work with the
Summer Institute of Linguistics, Peñones describes the language which has
withstood extinction in the vastness of Camarines, Albay and Sorsogon.
He said Rinconanda is deemed lingua
franca in Iriga, the towns of Bula, Balatan, Baao, Bato and Nabua while it the
name of the geographic and political district that includes Buhi whose folk
speak another tongue.
“Like most other Philippine languages,
Rinconada belongs to the Austronesian family of languages,” Peñones said.
“Bellwood believes that the Proto-Austronesian languages were spoken by the
people of South China and brought to Taiwan about 7,000 years ago.”
Studies show migration to Northern Luzon
down to Mindanao occurred about 2,000 years ago.
Peñones also cited Solheim’s Nusantao
Maritime Trading and Communication Network Theory, tracing the origin of the
Austronesian-speaking people 50,000 years ago in what is now called Sundaland.
“Jason Lobell (a literary writer in Rinconada
language) identified at least 16 consonants and 3 vowels” he said.
“Other
linguists, however, say it has six short and similar number of long vowels, and
17 consonants.”
What makes the Rinconada language unique
is its usage of an extra consonant phoneme which sounds much like the letters
h, y and w, according to Peñones.
“The Rinconada-Iriga variety has
retained the high central schwa vowel from
Proto-Philippine, a sound heard in words like ‘spur’ or ‘curl’,” he
said.
“In addition, Lobell noted the ‘presence of a speech registry reserved
for use in anger,’ which he observed is, ‘usually either loosely derived or
totally unrelated to their normal angry equivalents.’”
Peñones believes that the language with
its body of literature can hold a candle to the dominant Bicol tongue.
“The late Fr. James O’Brien, SJ, an
Irish-American who taught at the Ateneo de Naga and spoke Bikol himself,
attributes this to the (presence) of the Rinconada district,” he said.
Among the published works using the
language are Rangang Rinaranga (My Beloved Land) by Peñones, a collection of
poems with his English translation published by Naga City: Agnus Press in 2006;
Mga Tulang Tulala by Kristian Sendon Cordero; Rinconada Bikol-Filipino-English
Phrasebook by Lobell and Grace Bucad, a tourist-guide book published in 2001;
and the Rinconada edition of the Gospel of Luke published by the Scripture
Translators of Rinconada. – The Manila Standard
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