University of the Philippines Diliman | College of Social Sciences and Philosophy

Adasen

Adasen [tiu] is a threatened language (EGIDS 6b) spoken by the Adasen people in the Cordillera Administrative Region, specifically in northeastern Abra and western Apayao. Out of the 10,300 ethnic Adasens in 2010, only 4,000 comprise the speaker population (Eberhard et al., 2022). Its speakers show a high level of bilingualism, using both Adasen and Ilocano [ilo], but with a preference for the latter (Wurm, 2007). The Adasen people and nine other subgroups collectively form the Itneg ethnic group, known to outsiders as Tingguian (National Commission for Culture and the Arts, n.d.).

Works about Adasen

Other than Wurm’s brief entry about Adasen in the Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages (2007), the only work about Adasen available online is a data set of Adasen words compiled between 1962 and 1966 by SIL International. Information on the Adasen people is usually included in works that focus on Itnegs or Tingguians as a whole. For example, an article written by Gaioni (1989) details the ethnomedicinal practices among the Tingguian people but mainly focuses on two municipalities where other Tingguian languages are spoken. The researcher conducted fieldwork on a third municipality speaking Adasen but not much was written about it.

References

Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2022). Adasen. Ethnologue: Languages of the World (25th ed.). https://www.ethnologue.com/language/tiu

Gaioni, D. T. (1989). Traditional health care among the Tingyans. Philippine Studies, 37(1), 52–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42633131

National Commission for Culture and the Arts. (n.d.). Peoples of the Philippines: Tinggian. https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/glimpses-peoples-of-the-philippines/tinggian/

SIL International. (1962-1966). Addassen – Ba-y, Abra wordlist [Draft]. https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/77088

Wurm, S. (2007). Australasia and the Pacific: Alphabetical list of entries for threatened and extinct languages. In C. Moseley (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages (p. 468). Routledge.