THE KATIG COLLECTIVE
Initiatives in the advancement of linguistic rights

The Katig Collective is an initiative that seeks to advance the linguistic rights of various Philippine ethnolinguistic groups. Our mission is to raise awareness regarding the situation of the country’s languages, through this website that serves as a repository of information about Philippine languages that are endangered, threatened, and moribund.

The Katig Collective started in 2021 as a project for the course Linguistics 197 (Special Topics – Language Endangerment in the Philippines), supervised by Associate Professor Tuting Hernandez. The word katig comes from the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian word *katiR ‘small outrigger canoe’, which is reflected as katig ‘outrigger’ in some Philippine languages such as Tagalog, Bikol, Hanunóo, Romblomanon, Masbatenyo, Aklanon, Waray, Cebuano, and Maranao. Related forms are also found in various Austronesian languages outside of the Philippines. The development of the outrigger technology may have allowed the early Malayo-Polynesians to cross the Pacific. In current usage, through metaphoric expansion, the term katig has also gained an additional meaning ‘to support’.