Various orthographies, or spelling systems, have been used to write the Bontok language since the first wordlists and dictionaries appeared in the early part of this century. The orthography that has been adopted to represent Khinina-ang words and example sentences in this dictionary is a systematized version of the one that is currently used by educated native speakers, as well as in publications such as the Bontoc translation of the New Testament and literacy materials prepared by members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and others. This writing system is referred to here as the local orthography. Three other orthographic representations are also used. Following each head word given in the local orthography, the form is also shown in phonetic orthography, in phonemic orthography, and in a general orthography.

Local Orthography. The Khinin-ang Bontok spelling system uses the following letters: a, b, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, kh, l, m, n, ng, o, p, r, s, t, w, and y. The letter h (apart from its occurrence in the digraphs ch and kh) occurs in only a few, onomatopoetic words. A hyphen (-) also forms a part of the spelling system. It represents a glottal stop (a break between two sounds), when it occurs after a consonant, as in fab-a 'tooth', or between two vowels, as in á-ew 'shadow'. A hyphen is also used to join the separate parts of a compound or an idiom, as in fab-alin-si-fílig 'a kind of small tree, literally: mountain fab-ali'.

Some words can be distinguished only by the position of the stressed vowel in the word, and so stressed vowels that occur in certain syllables (open, penultimate syllables, and which also carry extra length) are marked with an acute accent, otherwise it is not written, e.g., kháyang 'crow', and khayang 'a kind of spear'. Stress marks are not usually written in other publications. A major difference between the spelling used here and that commonly used is that the letter u will not be found in native Khinina-ang words. There is no need to distinguish between the letters u and o, in order to efficiently spell such words. Some people also use sh in some words that are spelled here only with an s. For an explanation, see Reid (2006).

Phonetic Orthography. This is a broad phonetic representation of Khinina-ang words given in standard International Phonetic Association (IPA) symbols and enclosed in square brackets, for linguists interested in using the dictionary for studies of phonetic phenomena in this language. From this orthography it will be noted, for example, that the digraph kh is an aspirated, front velar stop [k̟ʰ], in contrast with a regular k, which is an unaspirated, backed velar stop [k̩], an unusual contrast in Philippine languages. Similarly, the letter r represents a retroflexed rhotic [ɹ], similar to the r-sound in some American and English dialects. It is not flapped or trilled, as in most other Philippine languages. Glottal stop occurs in Khinina-ang at the beginning of words that otherwise would begin with a vowel, but it is not represented in these positions in the local orthography. Otherwise, as noted above, glottal stop is represented by a hyphen. In addition to marking a single glottal stop between two vowels, as in á-ew [ʔáː.ʔəw] 'shadow', hyphen also represents a geminated glottal stop, e.g., ka-or [k̩áʔ.ʔʊr] 'rooster'. The vowel written as e in the local orthography represents a central vowel which varies from a high, unrounded [ɨ] to a schwa [ə] or a front epsilon [ɛ] before velar consonants. A colon [ː] marks vowels that are long. These are typically primary stressed vowels in open, penultimate syllables, and a period indicates a syllable boundary.

Phonemic Orthography. 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. The phonemic transcription of head words in the dictionary appear in slant brackets /bábʔa/ 'tooth' or /gáyaŋ/ 'crow'. The phonemic analysis upon which this system is based was completed nearly fifty years ago, using standard American structuralist methods of checking for minimal pairs and establishing distributional statements for allophonic variants, see Reid (1963). At that time, the language had four vowels and fourteen consonants, as shown in Table 1. This is the system that is reflected in the phonemic transcriptions in this dictionary.



In the language spoken today, however, because of borrowed words from English, Ilokano and other languages, many of the allophonic variants of these phonemes have lost their conditioning factors, and are recognized and represented as distinct sounds in the language, as shown in Table 2. For details, see Reid (2005)






Generic Orthography. This spelling system is useful for speakers of other Philippine languages, such as Ilokano or Tagalog, 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 as the official Bontok orthography about the same year. It was also used in the original Bontok dictionary upon which this dictionary is based (Reid 1976). It was based on the phonemes of the language at that time and its purpose was to represent only the phonemes, or significant sound units in the language, in ways which are consistent with commonly accepted practices in many other Philippine languages. It did not represent the phonetic variants of these sounds because 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 even though these sounds frequently occur in Khinina-ang and other Central Bontok dialects, they were variants of the /b/ phoneme. Similarly ch, and j, which were variants of /d/, and kh which was a variant of /g/ was not used in the general othography. Furthermore, r was not used, since that sound was a variant of the /l/ phoneme.