Welcome!

Welcome to the University of Hawaii at Manoa Ilokano Language Culture and Literature Program. We also call ourselves simply as the UHM Ilokano Program.

This academic program of the university has been in existence since 1972. It has earned its permanent status, as a degree-granting program in 2013.

In 2012, it celebrated its 40th year of service to the university community, to the state of Hawaii, and to the nation. It has served other international communities as well, with partnerships and collaborations with other institutions, individuals, and cultural workers outside the United States.

The UH Manoa Ilokano Program also maintains an alliance with the Nakem Conferences Philippines, a consortium of a number of academic institutions, local government units, and cultural agencies in the Philippines.

Native speakers of the Ilokano language in the Philippines account about 11% of the population, with about 2 million speaking it as a second language. Ilokano, popularly referred to as “the national language of Amianan” or “the lingua franca of Northern Philippines,” is also spoken in parts of Mindanao and in several Southern Tagalog Islands such as Oriental Mindoro, Occidental Mindoro, and Palawan. The Metropolitan Manila area has a huge number of Ilokano speaking residents. The Cebu Province in the Visayas has also a sizeable number of Ilokano speakers. In the diaspora, Ilokanos brought with them their language and hence, the huge number of Ilokano speakers in Guam, Alaska, California, Washington, Hawaii, Texas, New York, Nevada, and New Jersey, all in the United States. In other parts of the world, a huge number of Ilokano speakers are found in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

In Hawaii, about 90% of the Philippine population are Ilokano, or Ilokano-descended, thus giving rise to the need for public, social, medical, juridical, and related services in Ilokano including interpretation and translation for the individuals regarded as limited English proficient. Ilokanos continue to Hawaii each year as permanent residents, or green card holder. The number, of about 4500 annually, constitutes between 85-90% of all approved immigrants to Hawaii per year.

Historically the language of the Philippine diaspora, Ilokano is now being used as a language of teaching and learning in the Philippines with the institution of the Mother Tongue-Based Mother Language Education. Plans are afoot to have Ilokano language and culture included as part of the general education requirements for a number of the academic institutions in the Amianan.

The UH Ilokano Program is the only degree-granting program in the world. Other Philippine universities, however, offer Ilokano as part of a coursework for a degree in other fields such as in literature, education, language studies, language teaching, and linguistics, comparative literature, and English studies.In Hawaii, Ilokano is taught as part of the University of Hawaii Maui College Certificate in Philippine Studies. Two large public high schools with a sizeable Ilokano population offer Ilokano as part of their world languages curriculum.The UH ​Mānoa Ilokano Program partners with a number of civic and cultural organizations in various projects and services to the community, including extension programs in community language education, cultural literacy and performances, and capacity building. The Program’s Nakem Conferences has evolved an international alliance that has been instrumental in the holding of several international conferences since 2006 and in the production and diffusion of knowledge on the Ilokano and Amianan peoples, in the Philippines and in the diaspora.