Kapampangan  
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  • Kapampangang is one of the languages of the Philippines.

  • The native speakers of Kapampangan are found in the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac as well as Bataan and Bulacan.

  • Kapampangang is one of the eight major ethno-linguistics groups in the country.

  • The position of Kapampangan among the Northern Philippine language family is not clear. It's been grouped by SIL as a member of the geographically disjointed Bashiic-Central Luzon-Northern Mindoro language subfamily. This includes languages like Ivatan (spoken north of Luzon), Yami (spoken in Taiwan), and Iraya of the island of Mindoro.

  • The word Kapampangan is derived from the rootword pampang which means river bank.
  • Very little is known about the language prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.

  • Two 19th-century Kapampangan writers are hailed as being the equivalent of William Shakespeare in Kapampangan literature. Father Anselmo Fajardo was noted for his works Gonzalo de Córdova and Comedia Heróica de la Conquista de Granada. Another writer, Juan Crisostomo Soto, was noted for writing many plays. He authored Alang Dios in 1901. The Kapampangan poetical joust "Crissotan" was coined by his fellow literary genius Nobel Prize nominee for peace and literature in the 50's, Amado M. Yuzon to immortalize his contribution to Pampanga's Literature.

  • The Philippine Census of 2000 states that 2,312,870 out of 76,332,470 people speak Kapampangan as a native language.

  • While Kapampangan nouns are not inflected, they are usually preceded by case markers. There are three types of case markers: absolutive (nominative), ergative (genitive), and oblique.

  • Unlike English and Spanish which are nominative-accusative languages, Kapampangan is an ergative-absolutive language. It's a common misconception that Kapampangan is frequently spoken in the passive voice.

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