Bikol
/bɪˈkɒl
/(also Bicol)
noun (plural same or Bikols)
1A member of an indigenous people of SE Luzon in the Philippines.External appearance is more strictly regarded among the Bisayans than by the Bicols and Tagalogs....
- A great portion of the present population descend from the Nayons and the Onhans who immigrated to the islands from Panay and the Bicols and Tagalogs who came from Luzon as early as 1870.
- And the most marginalized group are the Tagalogs and Bicols.
2 [mass noun] The Austronesian language of the Bikol, with over 3 million speakers.In the Philippines there are some 85 mutually unintelligible though genetically related languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family, such as Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Waray, and Bicol....
- In ‘Border Lover,’ Merlinda Bobis compares the possibility of writing in Bikol, Pilipino, and English in the Philippines to the feeling of being ‘surrounded by the English language’ in Australia.
- The inhabitants speak Bikol, and the commercial/financial centers and transportation hubs are Naga City, the Heart of Bicol, and Legazpi City, the regional center.
adjective
Relating to the Bikol or their language.When Jesse M. Robredo became mayor of Naga, his hometown, the city had seriously deteriorated from its glory days as queen of the Bikol region southeast of Manila....
- Taking advantage of the government's changed stance against terrorism, the New People's Army said it would not release the soldiers it captured until the government suspends all military and police operations in the Bicol region.
- Mayon, a cone-shaped mountain situated 200 miles southeast of Manila that towers over farming communities in the Bicol region, is a major tourist attraction.