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The Palawan language belongs to the meso-Philippine group of languages. Its phonemic system has been studied by N. Revel-Macdonald (Revel-Macdonald 1979) and Henry A. Thiessen (Thiessen 1981). It has four vocalic phonemes, which are transcribed /i/, /u/, /a/, and /e/. The phoneme /e/, which I and other authors used to transcribe as /ä/, is a back open vowel similar to the “a” in English “ball.” I chose to use the present transcription with /e/ first because it is now used by Palawan informants to write their own language, and second because it is easier to handle with a computer. There are 16 consonants: /p/, /t/, /s/, /k/, /q/ (glottal stop), /b/, /d/, /r/, /g/, /w/ (semi-vowel), /l/, /j/ (semi-vowel), /h/, /m/, /n/, /ng/ (velar). An important note must be made regarding the transcription of personal and place names. Since most of the names, ngaran, and family names, apeledo or apelyedo (/apilidu/), are now registered and written down in official documents, and since many of the personal names in use are actually borrowed or directly derive from Spanish-Filipino or even English names, their spelling follows a different writing system. The letter “o” is used instead of “u,” the letter “e” stands for the phoneme /i/, “a” stands for /e/, the letter “y” is used instead of /j/, and “j” instead of /dj/. For instance, my closest collaborator writes his name as “Taya,” which is the equivalent of the phonemic transcript /teje/, and a person whose name I phonemically transcribe as /kuntilju/ is written “Kuntilyu.” “Medsino” is /midsinu/ or /mitsinu/, “Jawya” is /djawja/, and so on. xiii Transcription Notes ...

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