This article is about the specific Bisayan Cebuano language. It is not to be ano ang bicol express with Bisayan languages or Brunei Bisaya language.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines. While Tagalog has the largest number of native speakers among the languages of the Philippines today, Cebuano had the largest native-language-speaking population in the Philippines from the 1950s until about the 1980s. Cebuano is the lingua franca of the Central Visayas, western parts of Eastern Visayas, some western parts of Palawan and most parts of Mindanao.
The name Cebuano is derived from the island of Cebu, which is the source of Standard Cebuano. Latinate calque, reflective of the Philippines’s Spanish colonial heritage. In common or everyday parlance, especially by those speakers from outside of the island of Cebu and in fact in Cebu the language is more often referred to as Bisaya. The term Cebuano has garnered some objections.
