Good Morning! (In the Ifugao Tuwali Language)

The old way to tell time is with reference to the sun.  For instance, this photo was taken in a mun-abia or mun-abigat in Ifugao Tuwali language, when the sun is yet beneath the horizon but reflects enough light to break the darkness. 

"Good Morning!" I greeted my eldest son one morning.

"Good Morning!" He responded.

Then I gamely asked him, "Ngan pe tuwali di hapit tau hi 'morning'?" (So what's our word for 'morning'?)  He answered "Ot morning." (What else but morning.)

And so I tried to verse him about how the parts of the day are said in the Ifugao Tuwali language. Broadly, morning is nawi'it, noontime is nalalgo, afternoon is nahimbatangan and night time is nahdom.  In some Tuwali-speaking areas, morning is biggatna and noontime is nal-algo.

There are terms for some specific time - mun-abi-a when daylight starts to emerge; munawiwi'it for the earliest part of daylight; nunggawa when the sun is about above the mountains (about 8 AM on the watch); nawod when the sun is already above the skies and nearing noontime (about 10 AM); naiwil just after noontime, mun-aahom when darkness starts to appear, and gawan di hilong for middle of the night.

Old folks also often make reference to usual things that happen to make reference to time.  For example in the very early, there is pimminghan or pinghan di talanu for the first cock's crow, pimmidwa or pidwa(second) or pitlun (third) di talanu.  At dusk, there is hinnah-hinag, or simply himminag or hinag with reference to the colorful strata or light reflecting from the sun below the horizon.

I don't think my son was able to absorb all that I said.  Maybe, he would when he finds how this is applied in some future conversations.

When our children were still infants, my wife and I decided that we use the Ifugao Tuwali language at home.  We agreed that their English and Filipino can be honed in school and Iloko which is the vernacular in our current residence can be learned from their playmates.  Our main objective is for them to achieve conversational proficiency in the native language so they won't have difficulty conversing with folks when we visit our hometown.  I think we have achieved the objective although we have observed that sometimes they have some problems in Ifugao "grammar", if we can call it as such, and on correct usage of words.  My "good morning" to my eldest shows they have a lot to improve on.