INTRODUCING VINANÁW

Vinanáw, or Vanaw, is the language of the Vanaw people. The main dialect is one generally used by those who live in the so-called "Mother Vanaw" (i.e., Pantikian, Sesec-an, and Balbalasang). Its two other dialectal variants are Jinagyúman and Minalibkúng.

In the Ethnologue, the code for Vinanaw is bjx.  Prior to 2022, the language was not listed as a distinct Kalinga language but subsumed under Itneg or Kalinga languages.  Through the encouragement of the Austronesian linguistics expert Dr. Lawrence Andrew Reid, we were able to provide enough data as a subscriber-contributor to the Ethnologue for Vinanaw or Vanaw to be considered as one of the eight recognized Kalinga languages.

Thus, in the 25th edition of the Ethnologue (2022, 42), we have this entry:

Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2022. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-fifth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online: http://www.ethnologue.com.

I am grateful to Romulo Tangbawan for his valuable suggestions corrections and other inputs to our ongoing Vanaw language and culture documentation project.

As of today, we are still working on the official Vinanaw Orthography and the Vanaw-English dictionary, as well as in the process of transcribing and translating folkloric materials gathered primarily from the Mother Vanaw area.