Bisaja | An Introduction to Bisaja (Cebuano-Souther Leyte)
Philippine Indigenous Languages Lecture Series (PILLS)
20 March 2023 | 2:00 PM | Livestreaming via Facebook & YouTube

 

The third installment of PILLS will feature PhD candidate, Joseph Añavesa and Asst. Prof. Divine Angeli P. Endriga. Añavesa and Endriga will discuss the preliminary description of the features of Bisaja, a variant of Cebuano spoken in Southern Leyte, Philippines. 

 

ABSTRACT:

The Cebuan subgroup of Bisayan languages (Central Philippine) has seven varieties identified in Zorc & Almarines (2021). One is a variety spoken in Southern Leyte, a province in Region VIII (Eastern Visayas) with a population of ~420,000 (2015 Census). Several works have been written on the Cebuano language, e.g. Wolff (1962, 1965); Bunye and Yap (1971a, 1971b); Trosdal (1969, 1990, 1992); Tanangkingsing (2006, 2007, 2009, 2013); and Pesirla (2012), but there is scarce literature on its dialectology (Blake, 1905; Endriga, 2010). Moreover, there is no substantial description available on the variety spoken by Southern Leyteños (Bisaja/Southern Leyte Bisaya/Binisaya). 

This presentation provides a preliminary description of the features of Bisaja. Included in the study are: the phonological profile of Bisaja, several internal dialectal variations, and some observed lexicon and usage that may be unique to this variant of Cebuano.