Abstract
The article documents two Bible translation projects in the Philippines that took longer than usual to finish. The Pampango Bible took twenty-four years, and the Bolinao New Testament took thirty-five years. Accelerated change in the society generated changes in language preference with Tagalog competing with Pampango. From thirty barangays (the smallest political unit) in the 1970s that spoke Bolinao, this has been reduced to only six. Reasons cited are: easy access by land on the part of the Ilocanos; transport routes that once were by sea are now primarily by land, with good roads from the town of Bolinao to Manila; and a new bridge bringing an end to the isolation of the island towns of Anda and Santiago. One obvious sign of language endangerment is that young children are now unable to speak Bolinao, and only those in their fifties or sixties use Bolinao with ease.
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