Most of the Babuyan population moved to Batan Island and to Luzon mainland during the Spanish colonial period.

Nowadays, however, their language has becoming endangered among Ivatan settlers' descendants especially newer generations born in Mindanao, due to being accustomed into a society of Cebuano-speaking majority.

[2] In the capital of Basco and the surrounding northern half of Batan, the area encompassed by Ivasayen, t is prominent, whereas in the Isamurongen zone to the south (Mahatao, Ivana, Uyugan and Sabtang) that phoneme becomes a ch.

Examples of the more visible variations of the Ivasayen and Isamurongen words and pronunciations are: Itbayaten is sometimes also considered a dialect.

It is derived from marunong (Filipino) and chapatak (Ivatan), literally 'someone who knows', which were then compounded to form the word mapatak.

[citation needed] Examples of metathesis in Ivatan include iskarayla for iskalayra ('stairs') and tumaraya for tumayara ('going up').

An orthography devised for use in public schools by the Department of Education uses the full 26-letter Latin alphabet, with three extra letters, ch, ñ, and ng.