Tatana language

Tatana'
Region	Sabah
Ethnicity	Bisaya
Native speakers	(21,000 cited 1982–2000)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Western Indonesian? Greater North Bornean? North Bornean Sabahan Southwest Murutic–Papar–Tatana Tatana'
Language codes
ISO 639-3	txx – Tatana'
Glottolog	tata1257  Tatana
ELP

Sabah Bisaya
Region	Sabah
Ethnicity	Bisaya
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Western Indonesian? Greater North Bornean? North Bornean Sabahan Southwest Dusunic–Paitanic Bisaya–Lotud–Dusunic? Bisaya–Lotud Sabah Bisaya
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bsy – Sabah Bisaya
Glottolog	saba1267  Sabah Bisaya
ELP

Tatana (Tatanaq) is a Sabahan language spoken in Sabah, Malaysia. Due to limited studies, it is hard to ascertain whether Tatana requires a category on its own or is considered a Bisaya variety based on its 90% linguistic intelligibility with the closely related Bisaya ethnic in Sabah. The current speakers of Tatana identify themselves as an ethnic subgroup of the Dusun people of Borneo. Jason Lobel (2013:360) classifies Tatana (along with Papar) as Murutic rather than Dusunic.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	dʒ	ɡ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s
Approximant		w	l	j
Rhotic			ɾ ~ r

• /ɾ/ may also be heard as a trill [r].
• Stop sounds /p, t, k/ and /b, d, ɡ/ are heard as unreleased [C̚] in word-final positions.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	(ɛ)	ə	(ɔ)
Open	a

Phoneme	Allophone
/ə/	[ə], [ɛ], [œ], [ɤ], [ɔ]
/a/	[ä], [æ], [ʌ]

References

• Lobel, Jason William. 2013. Philippine and North Bornean languages: issues in description, subgrouping, and reconstruction. Ph.D. dissertation. Manoa: University of Hawai'i at Manoa.