Introduction. Various systems have been used to spell the Bontok language since the first wordlists and dictionaries appeared in the early part of this century.  The early systems attempted to adapt the pronunciation of Bontok words to the English alphabet, even though some of the sounds do not have equivalent letters in English.  This dictionary uses four different writing systems.  The one you choose to use will depend on what your purpose is in using the dictionary.  All example sentences in the dictionary appear only in local orthography, and represent the pronunciation (and grammar) of the sentences in the Guinaang dialect of the Bontok language.

he four systems are:

1. Local.  For native Bontok speakers, who may be interested in finding the English definition of a word in their language, this is the recommended orthography.  It is a phonetically-based system of spelling, that is, it spells Bontok words in the way that they are actually pronounced, and is the system most commonly used by educated Bontoc people.  This system represents the breathy k sound which occurs before vowels with the letters kh, e.g. khawis 'good'.   It does not use c for this sound as some people do.  The system uses ch for the sound which occurs before vowels in words such as chíla 'tongue'.   The r sound is represented by r if the word contains that sound in its Guinaang pronunciation, e.g., chára 'blood'.  Glottal stop, which is the name linguists give to the consonant which sounds like a break in the voice between vowels, and which occurs in Bontok at the beginning of words that otherwise would begin with a vowel is not represented in these positions, in order to conform to the spelling practice of the National Language, e.g., fook 'hair', and áso 'dog'.   However, there are two positions where glottal stop is represented by a hyphen.   These are: a) immediately following another consonant, e.g., fab-a 'tooth'; and b) between two vowels, if the glottal stop is doubled, e.g., ka-or 'rooster'.   Only four vowels are needed, and only four vowels are used in the local spelling system in this dictionary.  These are i, e, o, and a.  Notice that the vowel u is not used.  When the vowel is long, the vowel carries an accent mark, as in the words for 'tongue', 'blood' and 'dog', shown above.  To find out how these letters are ordered in relation to one another in the dictionary, and how the dictionary is sorted according to the local orthography, click here.
   
   
2. Generic.  This spelling system is useful for Ilocano or Tagalog speakers who wish to use this dictionary to compare the way Bontok words relate to words in their own languages. This orthography was first proposed in "An Alphabet for the Bontok Language," Mimeograph, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Philippines, 1968, and was accepted by the Institute of National Language about the same year as the Bontoc Orthography.  It was also used in the original Bontok Dictionary upon which this dictionary is based. (Bontok-English Dictionary, with English Bontok Finder List. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, No. 36, pp. 505. 1976.)  It is a phonemically-based orthography, whose purpose is to represent only the phonemes, or significant sound units in the language, in ways which are consistent with commonly accepted practices in Tagalog and many other Philippine languages.  It does not represent the phonetic variants of these sounds because of these tend to obscure the similarities between Bontok words and those of other languages, and because of the considerable variety of variants used in the different Bontoc communities.  Thus, f and v do not occur, because these are variants of the b phoneme.  Similarly ch, and j, which are variants of d, and kh which is a variant of g are not used.   Furthermore, r is not used, since that is a variant of the l phoneme.   To find out how these letters are ordered in relation to one another in the dictionary, and how the dictionary is sorted according to the generic orthography, click here.
   
   
3. Phonemic. This system is useful for linguists who are interested in using the dictionary as a source for comparative language data, either for cross-Philippine language studies, or for reconstructing older forms of Philippine languages.  All of the symbols used are standard International Phonetic Association (IPA) symbols.  The phonemic analysis upon which this system is based was completed nearly forty years ago, using standard American structuralist methods of checking for minimal pairs and establishing distributional statements for allophonic variants.  It was published in 1963 as "The Phonology of Central Bontoc," Journal of the Polynesian Society 72:21-26.  It is possible that a different analysis would be necessary today, given the changes that have taken place in phonological theory in recent decades, and also because of the education system in the Philippines which has provided Bontocs with English symbols for sounds, such as f,v,ch,r, etc., which constitute contrastive sound units in English, but which have not traditionally had this status in Bontoc.  To find out how the phonemic symbols are ordered in relation to one another in the dictionary, and how the dictionary is sorted according to the phonemic orthography, click here.
   
   
4. Phonetic. This system is useful for linguists who may be interested in using the dictionary as a source for data upon which to do phonological studies.   All of the symbols used are standard International Phonetic Association (IPA) symbols.  There is, as in all languages, considerable variation between the pronunciation of forms between speakers even within the same small community, so that at times the phonetic transcription given may not precisely correspond to that of the sound files associated with most words in the dictionary.  Considerable work still needs to be done to correctly specify the rules for primary and secondary stress placement.   Primary stress is marked by an acute accent over a vowel, with length being marked by a colon (:) following the vowel.  I originally planned to mark secondary stress on tri- and quadri-syllabic words as well, using grave-accented vowels, but this goal has not been achieved.  To find out how the phonetic symbols are ordered in relation to one another in the dictionary, and how the dictionary is sorted according to the phonetic orthography, click here.