Central Luzon languages

Central Luzon
Geographic distribution	Western parts of Central Luzon near Mount Pinatubo and the whole Pampanga province
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Central Luzon
Proto-language	Proto-Central Luzon
Subdivisions	Kapampangan Sambalic Sinauna
Glottolog	cent2080
Geographic extent of Central Luzon languages based on Ethnologue

The Central Luzon languages are a group of languages belonging to the Philippine languages. These are predominantly spoken in the western portions of Central Luzon in the Philippines. One of them, Kapampangan, is the major language of the Pampanga-Mount Pinatubo area. However, despite having three to four million speakers, it is threatened by the diaspora of its speakers after the June 1991 eruption of that volcano. Globalization also threatened the language, with the younger generation more on using and speaking Tagalog and English, but promotion and everyday usage boosted the vitality of Kapampangan.^[1] Another Central Luzon language, Sambal or Sambali, experiences same situation, the speakers of the language are decreasing due to the globalization that many of the speakers of younger generation are shifting to Tagalog & Ilocano.

External relationships

Ronald Himes (2012)^[2] and Lawrence Reid (2015)^[3] suggest that the Northern Mindoro languages may group with the Central Luzon languages. Both branches share the phonological innovation Proto-Austronesian *R > /y/.

Internal classification

• Central Luzon
  • Kapampangan
  • Sambalic
    • Abellen
    • Ambala
    • Bolinao
    • Botolan
    • Mag-antsi
    • Mag-indi
    • Mariveleño
    • Sambali
  • Sinauna

References

1. Banal, Ruston (7 September 2014). "Wear Kapampangan: T-shirt entrepreneurs seek to boost Pampanga's language". Inquirer. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
2. Himes, Ronald S. 2012. “The Central Luzon Group of Languages”. Oceanic Linguistics 51 (2). University of Hawai'i Press: 490–537.
3. Reid, Lawrence. 2015. Re‐evaluating the position of Iraya among Philippine languages Archived 2016-04-24 at the Wayback Machine. Presentation at 13-ICAL, 18-23 July, 2015 at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.