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Cebuano ( ) Cebuano on Merriam-Webster.com Cebu on Merriam-Webster.com Columbia Encyclopedia is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines by Cebuano people and other ethnic groups as a secondary language. It is natively, though informally, called by the generic name Bisayâ (), or Binisayâ () (both terms are translated into English as Visayan, though this should not be confused with other Bisayan languages) and sometimes referred to in English sources as Cebuan ( ). It is spoken by the Visayans native to the islands of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, the eastern half of Negros Island, the western half of Leyte, the northern coastal areas of Northern Mindanao and the eastern part of Zamboanga del Norte due to Spanish settlements during the 18th century. In modern times, it has also spread to the Davao Region, Cotabato, Camiguin, parts of the Dinagat Islands, and the lowland regions of Caraga, often displacing native languages in those areas (most of which are closely related to it).
While Tagalog language has the largest number of native speakers among the languages of the Philippines today, Cebuano had the largest native-language-speaking population from the 1950s until about the 1980s. It is by far the most widely spoken of the Bisayan languages.
Cebuano is the lingua franca of Central Visayas, the western parts of Eastern Visayas, some western parts of Palawan, and most parts of Mindanao. The name Cebuano is derived from the island of Cebu, which is the source of Standard Cebuano. Cebuano is also the primary language in Western Leyte—noticeably in Ormoc. Cebuano is assigned the ISO 639-2 three-letter code but not an ISO 639-1 two-letter code.
The Commission on the Filipino Language, the Philippine government body charged with developing and promoting the national and regional languages of the country, spells the name of the language in Filipino as Sebwano.
While it is not widely spoken in Luzon, there are a few Cebuano communities in Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Bulacan, throughout Central Luzon, northernmost Luzon, including Cordillera Administrative Region, and Ilocos Region.
The name Cebuano, however, has not been accepted by all who speak it. Cebuano speakers in certain portions of Leyte, Northern Mindanao, Davao Region, Caraga, and Zamboanga Peninsula objected to the name of the language and claimed that their ancestry traces back to Bisayâ speakers native to their place and not from immigrants or settlers from Cebu. Furthermore, they refer to their ethnicity as Bisayâ instead of Cebuano and their language as Binisayâ instead of Cebuano. However, there is a pushback on these objections. Some language enthusiasts insist on referring to the language as Cebuano because, as they claim, using the terms Bisayâ and Binisayâ to refer to ethnicity and language, respectively, is exclusivist and disenfranchises the speakers of the Hiligaynon language and the Waray language who also refer to their languages as Binisayâ to distinguish them from Cebuano Bisayâ.
Existing linguistic studies on Visayan languages, most notably that of R. David Paul Zorc, has described the language spoken in Cebu, Negros Occidental, Bohol (as Boholano dialect), Leyte, and most parts of Mindanao as "Cebuano". Zorc's studies on Visayan language serves as the bible of linguistics in the study of Visayan languages. The Jesuit linguist and a native of Cabadbaran, Rodolfo Cabonce, S.J., published two dictionaries during his stays in Cagayan de Oro City and Manolo Fortich in Bukidnon: a Cebuano-English dictionary in 1955, and an English-Cebuano dictionary in 1983.Cabonce S.J., Rodolfo. 2007. English-Cebuano Visayan dictionary, An. National Bookstore: Mandaluyong.
During the Spanish Colonial Period, the Spaniards broadly referred to the speakers of Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Waray, Kinaray-a, and Aklanon language as Visaya and made no distinctions among these languages.
Cebuano is spoken in the provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, Negros Oriental, northeastern Negros Occidental (alongside Ilonggo), southern Masbate, western portions of Leyte and Biliran (to a great extent, alongside Waray language), and a large portion of Mindanao, notably the urban areas of Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern Mindanao, Davao Region, Caraga and some parts of Soccsksargen (alongside Ilonggo, Maguindanaon, indigenous Mindanaoan languages and to the lesser extent, Ilocano language). It is also spoken in some remote barangays of San Francisco and San Andres in Quezon Province in Luzon, due to its geographical contact with Cebuano-speaking parts of Burias Island in Masbate. Some dialects of Cebuano have different names for the language. Cebuano speakers from Cebu are mainly called "Cebuano" while those from Bohol are "Boholano" or "Bol-anon". Cebuano speakers in Leyte identify their dialect as Kanâ meaning that (Leyte Cebuano or Leyteño). Speakers in Mindanao and Luzon refer to the language simply as Binisayâ or Bisayà.
The earliest record of the Cebuano language was first documented in a list of words compiled by Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian explorer who was part of Ferdinand Magellan's 1521 expedition. While there is evidence of a writing system for the language, its use appears to have been sporadic. Spaniards recorded the Baybayin, which was called kudlit-kabadlit by the natives. Although Spanish chroniclers Francisco Alcina and Antonio de Morga wrote that almost every native was literate in the 17th century CE, it appears to have been exaggerated as accounted for lack of physical evidence and contradicting reports of different accounts. A report from 1567 CE describes how the natives wrote the language, and stated that the natives learned it from the Malays, but a century later another report claimed that the Visayan natives learned it from the Tagalogs. Despite the confirmation of the usage of baybayin in the region, the documents of the language being written in it other than Latin between the 17th century CE and 18th century CE are now rare. In the 18th century CE, Francisco Encina, a Spanish priest, compiled a grammar book on the language, but his work was published sometime only by the early 19th century CE. The priest recorded the letters of the Latin alphabet used for the language, and in a separate report, his name was listed as the recorder of the non-Latin characters used by the natives.
Cebuano written literature is generally agreed to have started with Vicente Sotto, who wrote " Maming" in 1901, but earlier he wrote a more patriotic piece of literature that was published a year later after Maming because of American censorship during the US occupation of the Philippines. However, there existed a piece that was more of a conduct book rather than a fully defined story itself, written in 1852 by Fray Antonio Ubeda de la Santísima Trinidad.
| Standard Cebuano vowel phonemes |
Sometimes, may also be pronounced as the open-mid back unrounded vowel (as in English "g ut"); or as the near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as in English "b it"); and or as the open-mid back rounded vowel (as in English "th ought") or the near-close near-back rounded vowel (as in English "h ook").
During the precolonial and Spanish Empire period, Cebuano had only three vowel phonemes: , and . This was later expanded to five vowels with the introduction of Spanish. As a consequence, the vowels or , as well as or , are still mostly . They can be freely switched with each other without losing their meaning (free variation), though it may sound strange to a native listener, depending on their dialect. The vowel can be pronounced as either or , or as immediately after the consonant . , however, are usually more conservative in their orthography and pronunciation (e.g. dyip, "jeepney" from English "jeep", will never be written or spoken as dyep).
There are only four diphthongs, since and are allophones. These are , , , and .
Like in Tagalog language, glottal stops are usually not indicated in writing. When indicated, it is commonly written as a hyphen or an apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. tu-o or tu'o, "right"). More formally, when it occurs at the end of the word, it is indicated by a circumflex accent if both a stress and a glottal stop occurs at the final vowel (e.g. basâ, "wet"); or a grave accent if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. batà, "child").
Below is a chart of Cebuano consonants with their corresponding letter representation in parentheses:
| + Standard Cebuano consonants | ||||||||
In certain dialects, may be interchanged with in between vowels and vice versa depending on the following conditions:
A final can also be replaced with in certain areas in Bohol (e.g. tambal, "medicine", becomes tambaw). In very rare cases in Cebu, may also be replaced with in between the vowels and / (e.g. tingali, "maybe", becomes tingayi).
In some parts of Bohol and Southern Leyte, is also often replaced with when it is in the beginning of a syllable (e.g. kalayo, "fire", becomes kalajo). It can also happen even if the is at the final position of the syllable and the word, but only if it is moved to the initial position by the addition of the affix -a. For example, baboy ("pig") can not become baboj, but baboya can become baboja.
All of the above substitutions are considered allophonic and do not change the meaning of the word.
In rarer instances, the consonant might also be replaced with when it is in between two vowels (e.g. Boholano idô for standard Cebuano irô, "dog"), but and are not considered allophones, though they may have been in the past.
There is no standardized orthography for Cebuano, but spelling in print usually follow the pronunciation of Standard Cebuano. Standard Cebuano is based on the Carcar-Dalaguete dialect (also historically known as the Sialo dialect) in southeastern Cebu, which was adopted by the Catholic Church in early Latin script transcriptions of the Cebuano language. The spelling rules of Standard Cebuano is usually applied regardless of how it is actually spoken by the speaker. For example, baláy ("house") is pronounced in Standard Cebuano and is thus spelled "baláy", even in Urban Cebuano where it is actually pronounced . Another example is in Boholano Cebuano, where its characteristic sound is still written as 'y' not 'j'.
An exception to this are dialects which replace the 'l' with 'w', in which case it is usually written as 'w'. For example, Standard Cebuano lalom ("deep"), becomes lawom in Urban Cebuano.
The letters 'i' and 'u' can also sometimes be interchanged with 'e' and 'o' (and vice versa), especially in the final syllable. This is due to the fact that historically, Cebuano did not distinguish between these sounds.
Other than the use of Standard Cebuano spellings, different Cebuano-language publications also have varying internal guidelines for spelling, syntax, morphology, style, and usage that they use.
The biggest component of loanwords that Cebuano uses is from Spanish, being more culturally influenced by Spanish priests from the late 16th century and invigorated by the opening of the Suez Canal in the 1860s that encouraged European migrations to Asia, most notably its numeral system. English words are also used extensively in the language and mostly among the educated ones, Code-switching rather than the direct Cebuano. For example, instead of saying "magpalít" (" to buy", in future tense), speakers would often say "mag- buy" .
The language uses a base-ten numeral system, thence the sets of ten are ultimately derived from the unit except the first ten which is "napulò", this is done by adding a prefix ka- , then followed by a unit, and then the suffix -an . For example, 20 is spoken as ka-duhá-an (lit. "the second set of ten"). The numbers are named from one to ten, for values after ten, it is spoken as a ten and a unit . For example, 11 is spoken as "napulò ug usá" , shortened to "napulò'g usá" (lit. "ten and one"), 111 is spoken as "usa ka gatós, napulò ug usá", and 1111 is spoken as "usá ka libo, usá ka gatós, napulò ug usá". The ordinal counting uses the prefix ika-, and then the unit, except for "first" which is "una". For example, ika-duhá means "second".
And below is the official translation of the Lord's Prayer.
| Hello. | Kumusta. |
| Yes. | Oo/O. |
| Yes please. | Oo/O, palihug. |
| No. | Dilì. |
| No thanks. | Ayáw lang, salamat. |
| Please. | Palihug. |
| Thank you. | Salamat kanimo. |
| Thank you very much. | Daghan kaayong salamat. |
| You're welcome. | Walá'y sapayán. |
| I'd like a coffee please. | Gusto ko'g kapé, palihug. |
| Two beers please. | Duhá ka serbesa, palihug. |
| Excuse me. | Ekskiyus sâ ko. |
| What time is it? | Unsa na'ng orasa? |
| Can you repeat that please? | Balika ganì 'to, palihug? |
| Please speak slowly. | Palihug hinaya pagsulti. |
| I don't understand. | Walâ ko kasabót. |
| Sorry. | Pasaylo-a/Pasensya. |
| Where are the toilets? | Hain dapít ang kasilyas? |
| How much is this? | Tag-pila man kiní?/Tag-pila ni? |
| Welcome! | Dayón! |
| Good morning. | Maayong buntag. |
| Good afternoon. | Maayong hapon. |
| Good evening. | Maayong gabii. |
| Good night. | Maayong pagtulog. |
| Goodbye. | Babay |
There are four main dialectal groups within Cebuano aside from Standard Cebuano and Urban Cebuano. They are as follows:
| kan-on | lutò | lutò | cooked rice/maize |
| kiní/kirí | kirí/kiní | iní | this |
| kan | karâ/kanâ | itón | that |
| dinhí/dirí | arí/dinhí/dirí | didí/ngadí/aadi/dinhi | here |
| dihâ/dinhâ | dirâ/dihâ/dinhâ | didâ/ngadâ/aadâ | there |
| bas/balás | bas/balás | barás | soil/sand |
| alsa | arsa | alsa | to lift |
| bulsa | bursa | bulsa |
Other examples include: Nibabâ ko sa jeep sa kanto, tapos niulî ko sa among baláy ("I got off the jeepney at the street corner, and then I went home") instead of Ninaog ko sa jeep sa eskina, dayon niulî ko sa among baláy. The words babâ and naog mean "to disembark" or "to go down", kanto and eskina mean "street corner", while tapos and dayon mean "then"; in these cases, the former word is Tagalog, and the latter is Cebuano. Davaoeño speakers may also sometimes add Bagobo or Mansakan vocabulary to their speech, as in "Madayawng adlaw, amigo, kumusta ka?" ("Good day, friend, how are you?", literally "Good morning/afternoon") rather than "Maayong adlaw, amigo, kumusta ka?" The words madayaw and maayo both mean 'good', though the former is Bagobo and the latter Cebuano.
One of the famous characteristics of this dialect is disregarding the agreement between the verb "To go (Adto, Anha, Anhi, Ari)" and locative demonstratives (Didto, Dinha, Dinhi, Diri) or the distance of the object/place. In Cebu Cebuano dialect, when the verb "to go" is distal (far from both the speaker and the listener), the locative demonstrative must be distal as well (e.g. Adto didto . Not " Adto diri" or " Anha didto"). In Davaoeño Cebuano on the other hand does not necessarily follow that grammar. Speakers tend to say Adto diri instead of Ari diri probably due to grammar borrowing from Hiligaynon because kadto/mokadto is the Hiligaynon word for "come" or "go" in general regardless the distance.
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