DepEd Davao City's Spelling Guide for the Sama Dilaut & Central Sinama
DepEd Davao City in coordination with SIL Philippines and the Sama Dilaut communities of Davao City have developed a spelling guide which is relevant to all Central Sinama dialects and may prove useful for other Sama languages as well. My attendance at the Final Consultation for Sinama Orthography held on July 18th, 2018 in Tawi-Tawi has pushed me to make this document readily available to whoever might make use of it. I was involved in the compiling of the document. It does not veer far from the spelling principles of the Central Sinama project of SIL Philippines and currently it is the spelling system being used by the 13,000+ word Central Sinama – English Dictionary as recently published on Google Play and which eventually will be published in book format. This spelling guide is both polished and consistent in its spelling. The document itself adheres to the spelling rules that it presents. The Sinama languages are different enough from the Filipino language, and for that matter, from the Malay language, that attempting to conform Sinama spelling to a national orthography is detrimental to the orthography’s usefulness. The DepEd Davao City spelling guide in its current format instead takes into consideration the linguistic features of Sinama languages and presents a clear and consistent representation of the important sounds of the Central Sinama language and especially of the Sama Dilaut dialect of that language.
I have made the spelling guide available for download on Research Gate.
or you may read it here:
