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 La ...

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 been ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

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 (; ), is a component city in the province of Leyte, Philippines. It has a population of 111,848 people. With an area of , it is the second largest city in the province after Ormoc. Former ...

. 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 (language ...

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 historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia A ...

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

deictic In linguistics, deixis () is the use of words or phrases to refer to a particular time (e.g. ''then''), place (e.g. ''here''), or person (e.g. ''you'') relative to the context of the utterance. Deixis exists in all known natural languagesLyons, J ...

s, and various other features.

Geographic distribution

Utudnon is spoken by about 10,000 people in five

barangay The barangay (; abbreviated as Brgy. or Bgy.), historically referred to as ''barrio'', is the smallest Administrative divisions of the Philippines, administrative division in the Philippines. Named after the Precolonial barangay, precolonial po ...

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