The Sambal language is spoken by about 70,000 people in the five northern towns of Zambales province (Iba, Palauig, Masinloc, Candelaria and Sta. Cruz) and the most southern town of Pangasinan province (Infanta).

Traditionally, the Sambal language was written in a Spanish-based orthography. In 1988 with the first printing of this trilingual dictionary the new Sambal orthography was introduced. It is very close to Pilipino. The use of this new orthography has been approved by the Institute of National Language in April 1985.

The Sambal orthography has 14 consonants and 3 vowels: a, b, k, d, g, h, i, l, m, n, ng, o, p, r, s, t, w. There is also a glottal stop which is written in this dictionary with a hyphen word-medially (e.g. mag-atap “be careful”, ba-yo “new”).

Stress is important in each Sambal word. In this dictionary, stress is only written in ‘fast’ words, which means words with stress on the final syllable of the word, examples are (2) and (4). All other words are spoken ‘slowly’, which means the stress is on the penultimate syllable, examples are (1) and (3). The stress on these penultimate syllables is not marked. In example (2) the final syllable has a mark for stress on the last syllable, in example (3) the final syllable has a mark for a final glottal stop, in example (4) there is a mark for stress on the last syllable combined with a mark for a final glottal stop.

penultimate stress without glottal stop hala “horn”
final stress without glottal stop halá “dare you!”
penultimate stress with glottal stop lakò “merchandise”
final stress with glottal stop lakô “many”

In the dictionary the English term is given first, followed by the Sambal and then the Pilipino equivalents. The Pilipino expressions are not always exact translations of the Sambal word but rather give the meaning of the English in a natural Pilipino way.

It is remembered with gratitude that this project was originally helped on the way by a gift from the Sangunian Panlalawigan nin Zambales in 1979. There were many people along the way who helped to make this dictionary more accurate. Especial thanks go to Miss Patricia Luyks from Canada and Miss Elizabeth Tenney from the USA for checking the meaning of the English words, and to Miss Neri Zamora from Lipa City, Batangas, for checking the Tagalog counter parts in the dictionary.

ABBREVIATIONS

abbr. abbreviation
adj. adjective
adv. adverb
art. article
conj. conjunction
ex. example
n. noun
num. numeral
past past tense
pl. plural
prep. preposition
prog. progressive tense
pron. pronoun
sg. singular
v. verb