History of Pangasinan language

The Pangasinan language (Pangasinan: Salitan Pangasinan; Spanish Idioma pangasinense) is an Austronesian language, which is one of the twelve major languages in the Philippines.
Pangasinan is the name for the language, people, and province. The Pangasinan language, also called "Pangasinense", its hispanicized name, is spoken by more than one and a half million Pangasinan people (indigenous speakers) in the province of Pangasinan alone. Pangasinan is also spoken in other Pangasinan communities in the Philippines, and by Pangasinan immigrants in the United States. Pangasinan is the primary language in the province of Pangasinan, located on the west central area of the island of Luzon along the Lingayen Gulf. It is the official regional language in the province of Pangasinan, with a total population of the province of 2,434,086 (National Statistics Office: 2000 Census).


Austronesian-language speakers settled in Maritime Southeast Asia during prehistoric times, perhaps more than 5,000 years ago. The indigenous speakers of Pangasinense are descendants of these prehistoric settlers, who were probably part of the prehistoric human migration that is widely believed to have originated from Southern China via Taiwan about 100 to 200 thousand years ago.
The word Pangasinan, means “land of salt” or “place of salt-making”; it is derived from the root word asin, the word for "salt" in Pangasinan. Pangasinan could also refer to a “container of salt or salted-products”; it refers to the ceramic jar for storage of salt or salted-products or its contents.


source: Wikipedia