People and Culture
The people of Batanes are called Ivatan and share prehistoric cultural and linguistic commonalities with the Babuyan on Babuyan Island and the Tao people of Orchid Island.
This divided homeland is a result of the Dutch invasion of Taiwan in 1624 ( Dutch Formosa ) and Spanish invasion in 1626 ( Spanish Formosa ). The northern half of the Ivatan homeland, Formosa and Orchid Island which were formally part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, fell to the Dutch who were in turn expelled in 1662 by forces of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, led by the Chinese pirate Koxinga who then set himself up as The King of Taiwan.
The southern half of the Ivatan homeland, the islands of the Batanes, was reinforced and fortified by Spanish refugees from Formosa before being formally joined in the 18th century with the Spanish government in Manila.
The main languages spoken in Batanes are Ivatan, which is spoken on the islands of Batan and Sabtang, and Itbayaten, which is spoken primarily on the island of Itbayat. The Ivatan which is dominant in the province is considered to be one of the Austronesian languages. From college level down to elementary level, the language is widely spoken.
Read more about this topic: Batanes
Famous quotes containing the words people and/or culture:
“Tony Abbott: I didn’t know you played a saxophone.
Joe Pendleton: Yeah, well, a lot of people don’t know it. Even after they see me playing it they don’t know it.”
—Seton I. Miller (1902–1974)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)