Butbut has 37 sounds (13 vowels and 24 consonants) but are only represented with 26 orthography symbols (5 vowels and 21 consonants).
Order of the Butbut alphabet:
A, B, Ch, D, E, Er, G, Gw, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Wh, Y, and '
The glottal stop which is represented by a diacritic mark or straight quotation mark ' is included in the Butbut alphabet to help the readers recognize the stops occurring within a word except when occurring word initial.
The er is a representation of the syllabic r [ɚ] which occurs in words like : ergwa ‘wide’ and manacher ‘to study’.
The wh is pronounced with releasing first the h sound then followed by w as in whayat ‘banana’ and whilig ‘mountain’.
The letter y represents two sounds. It represents the regular sound of ‘y’ as in tipoy ‘viand’ and apuy ‘fire’. It can also represent the voiced dental approximant [ð̝] as in hoyoy ‘house’ and chaya ‘blood’.
The letters m, n, and ng may vary in sound in some villages when these letters occur in between vowels however the spelling is the same. For example m in ama ‘father’ maybe pronounced as the bilabial fricative[ß], n in sana maybe be pronounced as the alveolar flap [ɾ] and ng maybe pronounced as the velar fricative [ɣ] in inga ‘ear’
The letters Ch and J are pronounced just as it is pronounced in English.
The rest of the letters are pronounced the way they are pronounced in Filipino.
Spelling Rules
- Words are generally written as they sound.
- The following letters shall be used only in spelling borrowed words and proper names:
C, F, Q, V, X, Z. Borrowed words retain their normal spelling and these may either correspond to Ilocano, Filipino or English usage. In some instances, a borrowed word that has been accepted as part of the Butbut language undergoes alliteration, losing its original spelling to ‘conform’ to the Butbut way of pronounciation.
e.g. conference⇒confelens; truck⇒taya' lugan⇒lukan; flashlight⇒huslait mayor⇒major
3. Stress is phonemic occurring on the penultimate or ultimate of a syllable of a word. However, this is not represented in the orthography as it is predictable by the native speaker of the language.
Eg.
maUnissu ‘to wash feet’ manisUsu ‘the same’
ka U man ‘why’ kamanU ‘bolo’
- Only single syllable pronouns are attached to the preceding word.
E.g. mangan + a' ⇒ mangana' ‘I will eat’
mangan + cha ⇒ mangancha ‘they will eat”
manu' + 'u ⇒ manu''u ‘my chicken
5. Words can be contracted in Butbut like the words ‘ad’, ‘as’, ‘san’ and ‘gway’
e.g. Ummoy ami ad Bontoc. ⇒ Ummoy amid Bontoc.
Nangaya as Toen san sahun. ⇒ Nangayas Toen san sahun.
Ijoynu san hoyoyna nan silupna. ⇒ Ijoynus hoyoyna nan silupna.
Whayucha gway mansusunud. ⇒ Whayuchaay mansusunud.
- Rules for capitalization in English also applies to Butbut. E.g. at the beginning of a new sentence, proper names, titles, names of days of the week and months etc.
- Rules for punctuations in English also applies to Butbut. E.g. use of period, comma, quotation marks etc.
