Ilocano
7.000.000 speakers
0 language specific characters
ISO 639 code: ilo
Ilocano is an Austronesian language spoken by about 7 million people in the Philippines, mainly in the northwest of Luzon island, and also in Mindanao. There are significant numbers of Ilocano speakers in the USA, Middle East, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Canada and Europe as well.
Ilocano was originally written with the Baybayin syllabary, which is also used to write Tagalog, but this was gradually replaced by the Latin alphabet the Spanish arrived in the Philippines in the 16th century. One of the first publications in Ilocano was the Doctrina Cristiana of 1621.
The language is also known as Ilocano, Iluko, Iloco, and Iloko, and the Ilocano people call themselves Samtoy, a contraction from the Ilokano phrase saö mi ditoy, meaning 'our language here'.
source
wikipedia.org, omniglot.com & ethnologue.com