Bisaya

About Bisaya (Cebuano)

Bisaya is the everyday name for Cebuano, spoken as a first language by about 16 million people in the central and southern Philippines, in Cebu, Bohol, eastern Negros and much of Mindanao. It has more native speakers than any other language of the Philippines except Tagalog. "Bisaya" can also mean the Visayan languages as a group, but the guides here are about Cebuano.

Cebuano is written in Latin letters and read much as it is spelled. It shares many everyday words with Tagalog, such as salamat (thank you), but its grammar and much of its vocabulary are different, so it is a language of its own. Good morning is maayong buntag. For Tagalog, see Tagalog, whose standard form is called Filipino.

LanguageCebuano
FamilyAustronesian, Philippine (Bisayan)
Native speakersabout 15.9 million (2019)
Where spokenPhilippines
ScriptLatin alphabet
Codeceb (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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