Cebuano Language

Sounds

Cebuano has seventeen consonants: p, t, k, ʔ (the glottal stop), b, d, g, m, n, ng, s, h, w, l, r, y, and j (also spelled gy or dy). There are four vowels: i, e, a, and u/o. The vowels u and o are allophones, with u always being used when it is the beginning of a syllable, and o always used when it ends a syllable. But there are some exceptions, like kamatuoran (truth) and hangtúd (until). "E" originally appears only in few words such as "babaye" (girl/woman), "dayeg" (praise, complement), "gane" (he said, she said, they said, it was said, allegedly, reportedly, supposedly), "parayeg" (loving), and "pangadye" (prayer) and only in last syllables as "E" was mostly an allophone of "I" in final syllables. When Spanish arrived, more words with e has been added with the introduction of loanwords. Accent is also a distinguisher of words, so that dápit means "to invite", while dapít means "near" or "nearby place". Consonants [d] and [ɾ] were once allophones, but cannot interchange, like kabungturan (uplands) [from bungtód , mountain] is correct but not *kabungtudan and tagadihá (from there) [from dihá , there] is correct but not *tagarihá .