The Boholano Language

IJsselstein, Tuesday, 31 January 2006 (updated: Friday, 13 May 2011)

On Bohol, most people speak Cebuano, or, to be more exact, the local dialect of Cebuano, called Boholano. It differs in some aspects from the Cebuano spoken on Cebu. For example:

However, you will not face too much trouble making yourself understood on Bohol. Many people speak English, and almost all speak standard Cebuano as well as Tagalog.

The names used for languages in the central Philippines are somewhat confusing, to say the least. As the central group of islands is called Visaya (or more properly Bisaya, as there is no V in any of the languages spoken there), some people call Cebuano 'Visayan' or 'Bisayan' (Binisaya), however this term is confusing, as this name is also applied to Hiligaynon (also known as Ilonggo), spoken on Panay and in Negros Occidental, and Waray-Waray, spoken on Leyte and Samar. The Cebuano language is spoken on Cebu, Bohol, and Siquijor and parts of Negros, Northern Mindanao, and Leyte. Adding to the confusion is that many Filipino's call these languages 'dialects', even though they are quite distinct in many aspects, similar to the differences between English, Dutch, and German.

Of the three main Bisayan languages, Cebuano is the most common, spoken by about a third of the Philippine population and first language to more Filipino's than any other language, including Tagalog.

As a side note, also in Borneo, there is a people calling themselves Bisaya, speaking yet another language called, you guess it, Bisaya. The historical connection is of course that most Filipino Bisayans migrated to their current homeland some 1000 years ago. In a semi-literate population (the language had its own script before the Spanish conquest), separated by seas and mountains, a language can change a lot in such a span of time, so again this language is unintelligible to Filipino Bisayans, just as much as most English speakers won't be able to make much out of Anglo-Saxon.

Learning Cebuano

Since Cebuano has no official status, and minimal government support as result, there are not that many books available to help you learn Cebuano. In local bookshops, you'll sometimes find small phrase-books, that sometimes offer a curious insight into Philippine culture, but are not very useful to learn the language. However, if you search a little further, some good materials can be found. We've prepared on overview of Cebuano Learning materials on this site.

If a few canned phrases are all you need, this site has a short Cebuano Phrase Book available.

If you want to take the challenge and learn more of the language, invest in at least two dictionaries, and some of the better books mentioned below.

Cebuano has a number of features (shared with other Philippine languages) that make the language a very interesting object of study for linguists. In particular the way Cebuano treats its verbs are a continued area of debate, and as a result, you will see grammar books describing the Cebuano verb system in wildly diverse ways, which can at first be confusing. However, once you can see the system in practice, and memorize the patterns, it can be handled without all the theoretical baggage. Cebuano toddlers also learn it that way...

Courses and Grammars

On-line, a number of sites are available to help you learn Cebuano. Tom Marking has prepared a large PDF file with his study notes. Other sites with Cebuano material are learncebuano.com and livingincebu.com.

Freely available from ERIC is the Cebuano Language Packet, prepared for the US Peace Corps Volunteers. They also have a complete language course by Betty Baura, Cebuano para sa mga Peace Corps Volunteers. (The ERIC server refuses to serve most PDF files to non-US-based addresses, so look for a US-based webproxy that allows you to download this 10 MB file).

Marked for "missionary use only," but in fact giving a concise and easy-to-use introduction is Cebuano Language Objectives, produced by the Mormon Church. I like it particularly, because it gives a relatively easy overview of the complexities of Cebuano verb conjugations.

Mark Rubrico has a number of Philippine language courses, on his site Languagelinks.org, including Cebuano. They also sell the Cebuano course Magbinisaya Kita ("Let us speak Visayan") by Jessie Grace Rubrico.

You can also buy A Handbook of Cebuano by the Filipino (Boholano)-Finnish couple Anssi and Nida Räisänen. This combines a short topically organized vocabulary with a concise description of the grammar.

Older is Cebuano for Beginners by Maria Bunye and Elsa Yap. Published in 1971, this comprehensive 836 page intensive course was originally intended for US Peace Corps volunteers. They also published a dictionary to accompany this book.

Even more extended in scope is Beginning Cebuano, in two volumes by John U. Wolff, which appeared in 1966 and 1967. Wolff's course is designed for both classroom use and self-study with the help of a Cebuano speaker who can act as an informer. It contains extensive drills and dialogs. The second volume is still available from Yale university, but not very useful without having first completed the first volume, which only very rarely appears in second hand bookshops.

One drawback of Wolff's book is that it does not follow the common way of writing Cebuano. Although the use of the letter q for the glottal stop is very clear, it takes some time to get used to (also for Cebuano speakers trying to help you).

Mainly of historical interest are a number of Cebuano grammars that can be found on Google Books. Those all were published before 1923, and use the old, Spanish based orthography. Furthermore, they often try to force the grammatical concepts of Latin on Cebuano, which has a completely different structure.

Dictionaries

Good dictionaries for Cebuano are also quite hard to obtain, but a number of good ones do exist.

On this site, we offer a search interface on the excellent Cebuano dictionary by John U. Wolff, first published in 1972. Scans of this book are available on line at Cornell University: Vol I (A-K) and Vol II (L-Z). This is the best dictionary available for Cebuano. However, make sure you read the introduction before using it, and understand that it does not use the common orthography.

Also very useful is the dictionary at binisaya.com, produced as an offshoot of the author's research in Cebuano verbal morphology. It has a large vocabulary, and is able to find matching root words at ease.

At bookstores in Cebu, you will probably be able to buy An English-Cebuano Visayan Dictionary by Rodolfo Cabonce. Although comprehensive, this work is more useful to Cebuano speakers who need to look up the meaning of a Cebuano word than for learners of Cebuano who like to find out a word in Cebuano.

More recent is Jes Tirol's Kapulongnan Binisay-Ininglis/Dictionary Bisaya-English, which appeared in 2010, and is well worth its PHP 950 price-tag.

Almost simultaneous with Wolff's dictionary, in 1971, Maria Bunye and Elsa Yap published their Cebuano-Visayan Dictionary.

More dictionaries are listed on Jessie Grace Rubrico's Review of Cebuano dictionaries..

Jeroen Hellingman

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