Classical Cebuano ( ceb, Karaang Sinugboanon, Karaang Binisaya; Badlit: pre-virama: , post-virama: ) was a form of the

Cebuano language Cebuano (Cebuano
on Merriam-Webster.com ), natively called by its generic term Bisaya or Binisaya (bot ...

spoken during the Spanish colonial era of 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 ...

. It was the primary language spoken in

Cebu Cebu (; ceb, Sugbo), officially the Province of Cebu ( ceb, Lalawigan sa Sugbo; tl, Lalawigan ng Cebu; hil, Kapuroan sang Sugbo), is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, and consists of a main island and ...

Bohol Bohol (), officially the Province of Bohol ( ceb, Lalawigan sa Bohol; tl, Lalawigan ng Bohol), is an island province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, consisting of the island itself and 75 minor surrounding islands. It ...

, and other parts of

Visayas The Visayas ( ), or the Visayan Islands ( Visayan: ''Kabisay-an'', ; tl, Kabisayaan ), are one of the three principal geographical divisions of the Philippines, along with Luzon and Mindanao. Located in the central part of the archipelago, i ...

and

Mindanao Mindanao ( ) ( Jawi: مينداناو) is the second-largest island in the Philippines, after Luzon, and seventh-most populous island in the world. Located in the southern region of the archipelago, the island is part of an island group of t ...

History

The earliest surviving record of Cebuano was from a wordlist collected by

Antonio Pigafetta Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...

during the

Magellan expedition The Magellan expedition, also known as the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was the first voyage around the world in recorded history. It was a 16th century Spanish expedition initially led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan to the Moluccas ...

in 1521. The wordlist contains about 160 Cebuano words (some of which are in Malay) written in an Italian-influenced

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

, which is considered problematic due to its inconsistent and unphonetic spelling system. The oldest reliable glimpse of Cebuano's

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

and

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

was from Domingo Ezguerra's ''Arte de la Lengua Bisaya de la Provincia de Leyte'', a Waray grammar book written in 1663. The first dedicated grammar book for Cebuano, Francisco Encina's ''Arte de la Lengua Zebuana'', was compiled in 1801 (40 years after his death).

Phonology

The phonological system of Classical Cebuano was relatively minimal compared to Modern Cebuano, which has more phonological inventory due to the influence of foreign languages such as Spanish and English.

Vowels

The Classical Cebuano

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

inventory consists of three vowel phonemes (/a/, /i/, /u/). Some dialects of Modern Cebuano, particularly those in Bohol, have retained a close back unrounded vowel / ɯ/, which means it might have existed in Classical Cebuano, although unrecorded and possibly

dialectal The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...

Consonants

The Classical Cebuano

inventory consisted of 15 consonant phonemes (in which /d/ and /r/ were treated as a single phoneme). The consonant /r/ was pronounced only when the phoneme /d/ was situated between two vowels. The natives described the final ''-d'' as a medial sound between /r/ and /d/.

Grammar

Case Markers

Classical Cebuano possessed separate plural personal case markers (''sa'', ''na'', and ''ka''), which are not retained in any dialect of Modern Cebuano.

Pronouns

Classical Cebuano underwent morphological changes throughout the Spanish period. One of the most notable was the change from *s(i)- to *k(i)- as the direct case-marking prefix for Cebuano demonstrative (e.g. ''sini'' -> ''kini'') and

interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...

(e.g. ''sinsa'' -> ''kinsa'') pronouns. Classical Cebuano, especially the one spoken in Bohol, still had plural case markers ''sa'', ''na'', and ''ka'', which are already obsolete in Modern Cebuano. They were also used to form plural demonstratives, which are considered rare among

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 ...

Demonstratives

Interrogatives

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Cebuano Cebuano language Languages of the Philippines Verb–subject–object languages