| Also Known As: Cebuano Language,Bisayan,Sugbuhanon,Sugbuanon,Sebuano,Visayan,Binisaya,Cebuano
Description:
Cebuano is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines by about 20 million people. It is the most widely spoken member of the Visayan languages. Its name comes from the island of Cebu, the site of the second-largest metropolitan area in the country. Cebuano is given the ISO 639-2 three letter code ceb, but has no ISO 639-1 two-letter code.
Cebuano is spoken by the people of Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental, western parts of Leyte, some parts of Samar, Biliran islands, southern region of Masbate island, and some parts of Mindanao. Some dialects of Cebuano give different names to the language. Native people from Bohol may refer to Cebuano as Bol-anon while Cebuano-speakers in Leyte may call their dialect Kana. Speakers in Mindanao, and Metro Manila refer to the language simply as Bisaya.
Cebuano has 21 phonemes. There are sixteen consonants: p, t, k, ʔ (the glottal stop), b, d, g, m, n, ng, s, h, w, l, r, and y. There are five vowels: i, e, a, o, and u.
Before the arrival of the Spaniards, Cebuano had three vowel phonemes: /a/, /i/, and /u/. This was later expanded to five vowels with the introduction of Spanish words. The vowels o and u are still mostly allophones, however, with..... full article at Wikipedia |
