Alternate Names: Bajau Kagayan, Cagayan, Cagayan de Sulu, Cagayanen, Cagayano, Cagayanon, Jama Mapun, Kagayan, Orang, Sama Mapun
Dialects: None known. Intelligibility of Central Sama , 59%, intelligibility of Sama Pangutaran , 61%.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 43,000 in Philippines (2011 SIL). Population total all countries: 58,000. 4,000 monolinguals. Ethnic population: 43,000.
Language Use: Home, neighborhood, work. All ages. Positive attitudes. 37,000 also use Tausug [tsg]. Also use English [eng]. Used as L2 by Molbog [pwm], Southern Sama [ssb].
Language Development: Literacy rate in L1: 65%–70%. Literacy rate in L2: 30% in English; 60% in Tausug [tsg]. Many older women are illiterate. Used some at school. Poetry. Videos. Dictionary. Bible portions: 1979–1998.
Typology: VSO; stress is on the penultimate syllable; verbal affixations can mark actor-experiencer, instrument, object-undergoer-patient, beneficiary, location, passive, imperative, abilitative, causative, non-volitional, reciprocal, multiple actors, intransitive, etc; 3 prepositions used primarily to indicate special and temporal relationships.
Writing System: Latin
Nation of Origin: Philippines
Other Comments: The center of the ethnic group is on Mapun island (pop. 20,000), also known as Cagayan de Sulu, Cagayan Sulu, and Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi. The Mapun people only refer to it as Mapun. Many people from the island go to Sabah, Malaysia to find work. Many have settled there over the past century. There are approximately 15,000 Mapun people in Malaysia. There are approximately 5,000 to 10,000 Mapun people on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. Muslim.