Pangasinan

Pangasinan; is a province in the Philippines. Its provincial capital is Lingayen. Pangasinan is located on the western area of the island of Luzon along the Lingayen Gulf and South China Sea. It has a total land area of. According to the, it has a population of people. The official number of registered voters in Pangasinan is 1,651,814.Pangasinan is the name for the province, the people, and the language spoken in the province. Indigenous Pangasinan speakers are estimated to number at least 2 million. The Pangasinan language, which is official in the province, is also one of the officially recognized regional languages in the Philippines. In Pangasinan, there were several ethnic groups who enriched the cultural fabric of the province. Almost all of the people are Pangasinans and the rest are descendants of Bolinao and Ilocano, who settled the eastern and western parts of the province. Pangasinan is also spoken as a second-language by many of the ethnic minorities in Pangasinan. The secondary ethnic groups are the Bolinaos and the Ilocanos.The name Pangasinan pronounced as "Pang-ASINan" It means "place of salt" or "place of salt-making"; it is derived from the prefix pang, meaning "for", the root word asin, meaning "salt”, and suffix an, signifying "location". At present it is pronounced Paŋgasinan based on the Spanish pronunciation due to their inability to utter or pronounce the nasal sound /ŋ/. The province is a major producer of salt in the Philippines. Its major products include "bagoong" ("salted-krill") and "alamang" ("shrimp-paste")