Resources for Learning Cebuano

IJsselstein, Sunday, 11 August 2013

Learning Cebuano

Since Cebuano has no official status, and minimal government support as result,
it is not easy to find books that will 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, good resources can be found. We've prepared on
overview of Cebuano Learning resources on this site.

If you have any suggestions for additions to this page, please do so in the
comment box below.

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 US government ERIC site 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 sometimes refuses to serve most PDF files to non-US-based addresses. If

this happens, look for a US-based webproxy that allows you to download this 10
MB file).

Another curious resource, prepared by the US military, is Cebuano Headstart2.

This is fairly basic in content, but includes interactive exercises with graphics and
audio, and many phrases only relevant to soldiers.

Marked for "missionary use only," but in fact giving a concise introduction is
Cebuano Language Objectives, produced by the Mormon Church.

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. Given it's high
price, I haven't purchased a copy, and am unable to review it here.

Conversational Cebuano
Conversational Cebuano
Available from the Cebuano Studies Center is a very nice introduction to the
language: Conversational Cebuano, which, published in 2010, is the most recent
work available. This book includes a CD with mp3 files of the dialogues. At
P350.00 it is recommended, but to buy it, you will need to go the Cebuano
Studies Center Library at Josef Baumgartner Learning Resource Center, University
of San Carlos Talamban Campus, Nasipit, Talamban in Cebu City. It is not available
in other shops. While you are there, don't forget to pick-up copies of the small
bilingual books with Cebuano folk-tales, songs and riddles, they sell for a small
price.

For children (with a Cebuano background) there is Think and Learn in Cebuano,
available print-on-demand for USD 5.95.

You can also buy A Handbook of Cebuano by the Filipino (Boholano)-Finnish

couple Anssi and Nida Risnen. This combines a short topically organized
vocabulary with a concise description of the grammar. It however, does not
include a graded introduction of the language, as you would expect from a study
book.

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.

Beginning Cebuano II
Beginning Cebuano II
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).

Further Cebuano language books do exist, but I have not been able to obtain.
Some of these are:

Andrew M. Nelson, An Introduction to Cebuano, Rotary Press, 1964.

G. Trienekens, Bisay' Lessons, Cebu Star Press, 1963.
Antonio Van Odijk, Elementary Grammar of the Bisayan Language, Sacred
Heart Seminary, 1959. (Which was given quite a negative review).

If you have access to any of these, please be in touch with the webmaster.

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.

Cebuano Dictionary
Cebuano Dictionary
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