Cebuano  
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  • Cebuano, also known as Bisaya, Visayan, Binisayâ and Sugbuanon, is a member of the Western, or Indonesian, branch of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language family.

  • closely related to the Hiligayon (Ilongo) and Waray languages, with which it is sometimes grouped as dialects of a Visayan (Bisayan) language.

  • Native Cebuano speakers constitute about one-fourth of the population of the Philippines and as such comprise the largest linguistic and cultural group in the country.

  • spoken by almost 15 million people (1990 census, about 24.4% of the population of Philippines), in the regions of Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Visayas and parts of Mindanao.

  • 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 code ceb.

  • 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 long borrowed words from Spanish, such as krus (cross) and brilyante (brilliant). It has several hundreds of 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).

  • 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".
Online Dictionaries
Other resources
  • Cebuano Bible (2.8 MB) - The "HTML Bible" download contains the entire Bible with each chapter as a web page in a single Zipped file. These are plain ASCII text .htm files, suitable for almost any platform. To use, you must save and unzip the .zip file using PKUNZIP or Winzip, which you can get an evaluation copy from www.winzip.com
  • Cebuano Bible (3.3 MB) - The "SpeedBible" download contains a single file that does not have to be unzipped, but requires that you save the file and open with Internet Explorer 4.0 or better to use. It is in the Microsoft "HTML Help" format, as used on MSDN. The "SpeedBible" has a search engine, Index, Table of Contents, and is good for a standalone PC.
  • The Cebuano Language Atlas - An interactive atlas with 700 bibliographic records on the Cebuano language.
  • Cebuano Language Internet Broadcast - Sponsored by Bible Radio Network.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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