

|
| Cebuano (Sugbuanon) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Philippines | |
| Region: | Central Visayas and northern and western Mindanao | |
| Total speakers: | first language: 18 million second language: 10 million (est.) |
|
| Ranking: | 62 | |
| Genetic classification: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Western Malayo-Polynesian Central Philippine Visayan Cebuano |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | — | |
| ISO 639-2: | ceb | |
| ISO/DIS 639-3: | ceb | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Cebuano, also known as Sugbuanon, is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines by about 18,000,000 people and is a subgroup or member of Bisaya, Visayan and Binisayâ. The name came from the Philippine island of Cebu, with the Spanish suffix -ano meaning native, of a place, added at the end. Cebuano is given the ISO 639-2 three letter code ceb, but has no ISO 639-1 two letter code.
Cebuano is a member of the Visayan language family.
Contents |
Cebuano is spoken natively by the inhabitants of Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental and the people in western Leyte province and northern Mindanao. It is also spoken in a few towns and islands in Samar. Until the 1980's, Cebuano surpassed Tagalog in terms of number of native speakers. Some dialects of Cebuano give different names to their languages. Residents of Bohol may refer to their language as Bol-anon while Cebuano-speakers in Leyte may call their dialect Kana. Cebuano is a language with Verb Subject Object sentence order. It uses prepositions rather than postpositions. Nouns come after adjectives, but before genitives or relative phrases.
Cebuano has sixteen consonants: p, t, k, ? (the glottal stop), b, d, g, m, n, ng, s, h, w, l, r and y. There are three vowels: i, a, and u/o. The vowels u and o are allophones, with u always being used when it is the beginning of a syllable, and o always used when it ends a syllable. Accent is also a distinguisher of words, so that dápit means "to invite", while dapít means "place".
Nouns in Cebuano are inflected for person, number, and case, with inclusive and exclusive "we" distinguished. The four cases are nominative, preposed genitive, postposed genitive, and oblique.
| Absolutive | Ergative1 (Postposed) |
Ergative2 (Preposed) |
Oblique | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | ako, ko | nako, ko | akong | kanako, nako |
| 2nd person singular | ikaw, ka | nimo, mo | imong | kanimo, nimo |
| 3rd person singular | siya | niya | iyang | kaniya, niya |
| 1st person plural inclusive | kita, ta | nato | atong | kanato, nato |
| 1st person plural exclusive | kami, mi | namo | among | kanamo, namo |
| 2nd person plural | kamo, mo | ninyo | inyong | kaninyo, ninyo |
| 3rd person plural | sila | nila | ilang | kanila, nila |
Cebuano has long borrowed words from Spanish, such as krus [cruz] (cross) and brilyante [brillante] (brilliant). It has several hundred loan words from English as well, which are altered to conform to the limited phonemic inventory of Cebuano: brislit (bracelet), hayskul (high school), syapin (shopping), dikstrus (dextrose), sipir (zipper), bigsyat (big shot), or prayd tsikin (fried chicken).
The use of Tagalog language as a basis for Pilipino drew criticism from other Philippine linguistic groups. To some extent, there was active resistance shown against its usage. For instance, in the eighties, after an attempt by the Central Government to enforce the use of Tagalog as the language of instruction in all public schools, the governor of Cebu initiated the singing of the Philippine national anthem in Cebuano rather that in Pilipino (Tagalog) in the island province of Cebu. This resistance was not intended to undermine the country's national unity. On the part of the Cebuanos, it was mostly a protest against "imperial Manila" and a clamor for linguistic and regional recognition.
The Cebuano desire for special recognition finds support from the following arguments:
...
However, Spanish is more commonly used for numbers above 10
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...