Central Sinama (Bahasa Sinama / Bajau / Badjao)

Central Sinama is a member of the Sama-Bajaw group of the Bornean branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family spoken in the southern Philippines. It is closely related to Sinama Banguingi and Southern Sinama.

In the year 2000 there were thought to be about 105,000 speakers of Central Sinama. It is spoken in the provinces of Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, and in Sandakan in the State of Sabah.

There is a great number of dialects within the Central Sinama language depending upon the island of origin of the Sama group. These are some of the significant Central Sinama dialect groups: Sama Laminusa, Sama Tabawan, Sama Sibaud, Sama Manubal, Sama Musu', Sama Silumpak, and the Sama Dilaut, the sea gypsies well known throughout the Philippines as the Badjao. Sama Dilaut, or sama to'ongan ('genuine Sama'), is the largest dialect group with about 80,000 speakers in Sulu province, especially in Zamboanga City, and also in Sitangkai in Tawi-Tawi province.

Sinama is written with the Latin alphabet.

Central Sinama alphabet and pronunciation

Central Sinama aalphabet and pronunciation

Notes

Ng represents the ŋ sound.
Tagalog includes ng as a letter. Bahasa Melayu does not. Ng is left out of the Sinama alphabet.
b becomes [β] and g becomes [Ɣ] when found between two vowels.
ꞌ represents the 6th vowel sound and is always found before two consonants
ꞌ is not written when in the word initial position.
ꞌ represents the glottal stop (hamsaꞌ) when found between two vowels or in the word final position.
ꞌ is commonly written with an apostrophe following Arabic transcriptions in the Latin Alphabet.
Lengthened vowels a, e, i, o, and u are written with a macron i.e. ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū.

Information about Sinama compiled by Kauman Sama Online

Sample text in Sinama

Sai na mbal alasa ma bahasana akalap lagi' min hayop maka min daing alangsa.

Tagalog translation

Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika, masahol pa sa hayop at malansang isda.

English translation

He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal or a rotten fish.

Sample video in Central Sinama

Information about Central Sinama | Numbers | Tower of Babel

Links

Information about Central Sinama
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=928474525756
http://sinama.org/about-sama-people/the-bajau-and-sama-people/

Sinama Alphabet Song
http://sinama.org/2011/04/sinama-alphabet-song/

Sinama Pronoun Chart
http://sinama.org/2010/03/sinama-pronouns-chart/

Common Sinama phrases
http://sinama.org/bahasa-sinama/introductions/ http://sinama.org/2010/03/common-phrases-adapted-from-learning-tagalog/ http://sinama.org/2010/01/sinama-phrases/

Linguistic Teaching in the Sinama Language
http://sinama.org/category/writing-tools/sinama-orthography/

Sama-Bajaw languages

Bajaw, Central Sinama, Inabaknon, Yakan

Languages written with the Latin alphabet

Page last modified: 04.01.22

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