Kapampangan

Kapampangan is a Central Luzon language of the Austronesian family, spoken on the central plains of Luzon in the Philippines, chiefly in Pampanga and southern Tarlac. Its name comes from pampang, meaning riverbank, and its speakers honorifically call it Amanung Sisuan, the nurtured language.

Before Spanish colonization it was written in an indigenous syllabic script and was current in the wealthy Kingdom of Tondo on Manila Bay, whose rulers bore the title of lakan.

Under Spanish rule the Latin alphabet took over, and the Augustinian Diego Bergano published an Arte de la lengua Pampanga in 1729 and a Vocabulario in 1732. Maritime trade and Spanish rule left Sanskrit and Spanish loanwords, and the nineteenth century brought a literary flowering around playwrights such as Anselmo Fajardo.