It also has many similarities to the neighboring Ibanag tongue, while remaining quite different from the prevalent Ilocano spoken in the region and the Tagalog-based Filipino national language.

Speakers of Itawis and Ibanag can easily understand each other because of the close relationship of their languages.

One such word is lamesa, which means 'table', for the Itawis people did not eat on tables, which were later introduced by the Spanish.

In the town of Rizal, Cagayan, a language called Malaueg is spoken by a group of people of the same name.

It is not yet clear whether Malaueg is a distinct language or not because its proximity to Itawis may possibly make it a dialect of the latter.

[citation needed] In a gesture of respect, Itawits usually use the name or status of a person at the end of a sentence.

[clarification needed] Linguists classify Malaueg and Rizal as dialects of the Itawis language.