ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 53: Cebuano Cebuano is a Philippine language of the Austron
ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 53: Cebuano Cebuano is a Philippine language of the Austronesian family, the same family that includes the languages of Indonesia and the pacific islands. It is secondary to Tagolog, the state language of the Philipines in total speakers, but first in terms of native speakers (i.e. not a second language). It is sometimes also called Bisaya, but this term may also refer to other languages and ethnic groups of the Visaya region. Cebuano, like English, contains the sound /ŋ/, “ng”. However, while in English this sound may only come at the end of a syllable, in Cebuano and can and frequently does come at the start. The ubiquity of “ng” segments is often a good indicator you are reading a language of the Philippines. Cebuano also has a verbal system mostly unique to its Philippine sisters, though also found in a smattering of other Austronesian languages called “Austronesian alignment”. To make it as simple as possible the verb conjugates not to agree with a subject or object, but with the topical focus of the sentence. For example, below are two sentences with all the same actors but different verb alignments, called “triggers”: Luto’on sa babaye ang bugas sa lata Luto’an sa babaye ang lata ug bugas Here’s a simplified breakdown: “Luto’” is the verb for “cook”. We see the suffx “-on”, which is the “patient trigger” (here “patient” roughly means “object”), and “-an” which is the “locative trigger”. “Babaye” means “woman”. “Ang” is a case marker, for our purposes it marks the topic. “Bugas” is “rice” and “lata” is can. “sa” and “ug” are also case markers, “sa” marks an oblique object (not the direct object) and “ug” marks the direct object. Both sentences say “the woman will cook rice in a can”. But in the first one you could rephrase it as “it is RICE the woman will cook in a can” and the second one would be “it is in a CAN that the woman will cook rice”. Note that the topic loses it’s normal case marker in favor of “ang” and shifts forward in the sentence. -- source link