Draft:Bahasapil

• Comment: This is promising -- but the sections on phonology and grammar are unreferenced. (And the list of references includes nothing that looks as if it would be about phonology or grammar -- though I confess that I haven't clicked on any of the links and looked for myself.) This, and nothing I write below, is my reason for declining the submission.
  Thank you for supplying DOIs for the references that you do provide. Clicking on the DOI takes the reader to the publisher's web page (usually). There's no need to supply the URL of such a web page when you also provide the DOI -- the DOI will do the job (and is more proof against link rot).
  By a "particle added as a suffix", do you mean an enclitic?
  Remember, "declining" is not rejecting. I hope to see this draft improved, resubmitted, and promoted to article status. Hoary (talk) 07:37, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

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Bahasapil
Bahasapil
Native to	Philippines
Ethnicity	Filipino (Bahasapillan)
Native speakers	40,000-60,000
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Bahasapil
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)

The Bahasapil language is an Austronesian language spoken in the south Philippines, most notably on Mindanao.

History

The Bahasapil language is thought to have initially formed as a pidgin language during the slave trading between the Bengal region of (then) India and the Philippines. There was a large but unknown number of South Asian Filipinos, as the majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were from Bengal and Southern India, adding Dravidian speaking South Indians and Bengali speaking Bengalis into the ethnic mix. It is thought that over time, the Dravidian speaking South Indians declined and that the number of Bengali speakers increased. This resulted in higher cultural diversity, and it is thought that the languages of Tagalog and Bengali merged into one, overtime becoming the modern Bahasapil. Thus, it is referred to as Bahasapil, a language related to Tagalog but with Bengali influences.

Bahasapil has helped to integrate Islam in the Philippines, the minority Muslim community of Bengali people integrated into the existing Muslim population of the Philippines in Mindanao. Bahasapillan Muslims have experienced the prejudice against minority Muslim populations in the Philippines.

Phonology

Bahasapil phonology is very similar to that of Tagalog, the notable difference that Bahasapil does not have any glottal consonants is because of its history, as it was influenced by Bengali (which only has 1 glottal consonant), it is thought that over time as the language developed, glottal consonants were lost.

Although there are some slight differences in consonants, the vowels are identical in Bahasapil and Tagalog, the vowels haven’t been influenced greatly by Bengali as it also shares some vowels in common with Tagalog.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar
Stop	p b	t d	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ	k g
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Fricative		s	ʃ
Sonorant		l	j	w
Rhotic		ɾ

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

Grammar

Nouns

Personal pronouns

Bahasapil personal pronouns

Person	Nominative case	Accusative case	Genitive case	Reflexive
1st, singular	amo	amoba	amokan	amoten
2nd, singular	itu	ituba	itukan	ituten
3rd, singular	esi	esiba	esikan	esiten
1st, plural	ata	ataba	atakan	ataten
2nd, plural	itu	ituba	itukan	ituten
3rd, plural	tila	tilaba	tilakan	tilaten

Plural nouns

In Bahasapil, nouns are made plural using the plural particle na which is added as a suffix. This particle can be applied to any noun to make it plural.

Beti: woman

Betina: women

Verbs

Verb order

Bahasapil, like both Bengali and Tagalog, follows a SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) sentence structure. Bahasapil also lacks a specific word for ‘to be’ in the present tense, in other tenses, it is sig.

Negative verbs

Verbs are made negative using the particle ng, it always precedes the verb that it affects as a separate word.

Amo ituba kasat: I see you.

Amo ituba ng kasat: I don’t see you.