The Baybay language, also known as ''Baybayanon'', ''Utudnon'', ''Waya-Waya'' or ''Leyte'', is a distinct

regional language * A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area. Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Lan ...

that was spoken on the island of

Leyte Leyte ( ) is an island in the Visayas group of islands in the Philippines. It is eighth-largest and sixth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total population of 2,626,970 as of 2020 census. Since the accessibility of land has be ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

before the arrival of Waray and then later, Boholano and Cebuano. It is still spoken around the city of

Baybay Baybay (IPA: aɪ'baɪ, officially the City of Baybay ( ceb, Dakbayan sa Baybay; war, Syudad han Baybay), is a 1st class component city in the province of Leyte, Philippines. It has a population of 111,848 people. With an area of , it is the s ...

. It is part of the Bisayan language family and is closely related to other

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (languages ...

Classification

Baybayanon was originally a Warayan language that has been relexified and overlaid by a Cebuano (Leyteño)

superstratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

. The Warayan substratum is characterized by Baybayanon's more Waray-like

deictic In linguistics, deixis (, ) is the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words ''tomorrow'', ''there'', and ''they''. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their de ...

s, and various other features.

Geographic distribution

Utudnon is spoken by about 10,000 people in five

barangay A barangay (; abbreviated as Brgy. or Bgy.), historically referred to as barrio (abbreviated as Bo.), is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district, or ward. In metropolitan ...

s of

municipality, central

, namely Utúd (also called Utod or Guadalupe), Gábas, Kilím, Pátag, Pangasúgan and Hibunawan.

References

Visayan languages Languages of Leyte (province) {{CPhilippine-lang-stub