Hanunoo language

Hanunoo is spoken in the following locations according to Barbian (1977):^[3]

• Barrio Tugtugin, San Jose, Occidental Mindoro
• Naluak, Magsaysay, Occidental Mindoro (on the upper Caguray River)
• Bamban, Magsaysay, Occidental Mindoro (also with Ratagnon and Bisayan residents)
• Barrio Panaytayan, Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro (about 5 km (3.1 mi) from the highway in the mountains southwest of Mansalay)

Pronouns in Hanunoo are inflected to indicate grammatical case, number, tense, inclusion, and person. Verbs can be inflected for grammatical aspect, active versus passive voice, and grammatical mode. Adjectives can be inflected to show different degrees of comparison.^[7]

Word order can be determined by relative importance but the most common is verb–subject–object, with passive voice being preferred.^[8]

The Hanunoo language has four basic color terms, these being mabīru (the core of which is black; also includes violet, blue, indigo, dark green and all dark shades), malagtiˀ (white; also all very light tints of other colors), mararaˀ (orange-red; also all other warm tones), and malatuy (leaf green; also mixtures of greens, yellows, and light browns).^[9] Mararaˀ and malatuy are also used to refer to "dry" or "fresh" colors; for example, a freshly cut piece of brown bamboo would be malatuy rather than mararaˀ, despite brown being a warm color.^[9]

In addition to the four primary color terms, Hanunoo has several secondary color terms. Many of these terms come from existing nouns, either by using the noun outright (bulāwan refers both to the metal gold and to a golden color) or by adding the prefix ma- (lit. "exhibiting, having, to be").^[9][10] For instance, madilaw (yellow) comes from dilaw, meaning "turmeric".^[9]

To refer specifically to the core colors the word gid will be added after the initial color term, such as mabīru gid (jet black, lit. "very black").^[9] For hues further from the focal point the second part of the word is repeated, like mabīrubīru ("somewhat black") for a shade that isn't pure black, but it still in the mabīru category.^[9] This is also done with secondary color terms, for instance madīlawdīlaw ("weak yellow").^[9]

Color is usually not considered as important as texture or light reflectivity when describing objects in Hanunoo, with many descriptions being polymorphemic.^[9]