A Handbook Of Cebuano Visayan Paperback – May 21, 2016

This book is THE best resource currently available for learning Cebuano. Hands down. It has extensive coverage in terms of vocabulary (organized thematically), sentences (both in the "phrasebook" section as well as several sample sentences to illustrate grammar points) and grammar. Cebuano grammar in particular is extremely difficult to wrap your head around if you're a native English speaker, and the authors go out of their way to make the grammar as explicit and comprehensible as possible through the use of both text explaining complex grammatical topics as well as many in-language use cases. When a grammatical concept is explained, it is usually followed by a list of notes explaining exceptions, common "gotchas," differences between spoken and written language, and unusual usages. Really, if the question "How do I say this in Cebuano?" pops up in your head, while this book may not give you the literal thing to say, as a phrasebook would do, it will equip you with the ability to "figure out" how it would be said by figuring out the right grammatical form and building phrases and sentences from base elements. This is far more important for people who are trying to actually learn the language (as opposed to learning a few phrases to use during a short trip).However, there is one specific and seemingly odd thing that really converted me to a fan of this book: this is the ONLY resource I could find, online or on paper, that explicitly marks which syllable in the word should be stressed, and where glottal stops are located. I come from a background in learning Russian, where knowing which syllable to place stress is absolutely vital to speaking properly and being understood. Perhaps due to the way Russian pedagogy developed in the Soviet Union, explicitly marking stress has become the de facto standard in ALL beginner Russian language learning materials; the idea of producing, for example, a textbook without stress markers would be considered ludicrous and students using such a textbook would have a much harder time learning to speak properly, even with a teacher available to pronounce words and phrases.Almost all Cebuano books and websites I've browsed emphasize that the location of the stress - on the final or penultimate syllable - as well as the presence or absence of glottal stops, can change the meaning of the word, even if it's "spelled" the same. For example: WAla means to become lost, waLA means left (as in left side), and waLA' (with a glottal stop) means "without" or "none." All of these are spelled in standard Cebuano orthography simply as "wala." Unfortunately, even though all resources mention this, all of them - except this book - go on to provide an entire textbook's worth of vocabulary WITHOUT marking stress or glottal stops. I found this extremely frustrating and started to think I would have to contact a native Cebuano speaker to verify the pronunciation of every single word I learned until I found this book. All stresses and glottal stop locations are marked, so you can be sure you're learning pronunciation correctly. This makes this resource utterly invaluable, and an absolute must-own if you're learning Cebuano. Anssi and Nida: if you ever read this, I really want to thank you for making this resource available and having the mindfulness to know how important stress and glottal stops are to beginner learners.

My girlfriend (ex) is from Mindanao and she doesn't know english so I started learning bisaya. I've taken 1 online course (paid course) and I've watched dozens of videos. I don't want to say that I'm an intermediate student but I'd rather prefer to consider myself FAMILIAR with the bisaya language. I've been to Butuan and San Franz and I plan to visit Lapu-lapu in Cebu. I purchased this book to help expand my vocabulary of bisayan words and phrases.From my experience in bisaya, I give this book 5 stars.Telling time is in this book. I already knew the hours but it also teaches you fractional time such as 10:15am. Numerology is in this book. The number 3 and the time 3 are completely different. There are sections for the animals, insects, anatomy, colors, etc.If you are a beginner/intermediate you need this book!

This book explains many questions I had regarding grammar & sentence structure. I had been using apps for vocabulary and practice sentences. I was confused by differences that I was seeing.Here are a few examples that the book has helped me understand better:1) ang can be represented by 'y appended onto the preceding word. I was confused as many times I would see this method but the ' was not used and sometimes ending letters of the preceding word were dropped.Ako lang ang...... = Let me....Ako lay ....... also is the same. They replaced ang with y & dropped the ng from lang.2) Big is normally translated as dako in bisaya. But I was confused as sometimes I saw it spelled dagko. Also small is normally translated as gamay. But I was seeing gagmay. In the past I chalked it up to differences in area that it was being used such as Cebu vs locally. But I read in this book that the g can be inserted into various adjectives when dealing with plural nouns associated with the adjective.3) ha or a being appended to the end of a word. The book defines these as definitizers. I was seeing words like libro (book) as libroha or awto (car) as awtoha or balay (house) as balaya which was confusing until I read that section of the book.I'm happy that I ordered this book. I have not been successful yet in finding an electronic version. I like having electronic versions also as it makes searching by keywords helpful. Currently I am reading the whole book so the paperback is fine, especially during the frequent brownouts in our remote area ;-) but later it would be nice to have an electronic version for searching for keywords for memory refresher.

There are not as many Cebuano books. This is the best that I have found so far. I highly recommend it.

The authors did an excellent job at explaining how to speak Cebuano Visayan. Since I already have Visayan in my ear from growing up, I can hear what words should sound like in my head. However, for those who don't have that advantage, it would be nice if there was a downloadable auditory or listening guide, to facilitate learning how to pronounce specific vowels and words. Very well written!

I was struggling to find learning resources for Visayan. Initially, I was using material produced by the Peace Corps, the Mormon church, and the US military. But these were piece meal and didn’t provide a rigourous overview of grammar. Then I found “A Handbook of Cebuano/Visayan”. This is a serious body of work and not just something an expat put together to make a buck after living in the Philippines for a couple months. In this book, I was finally able to find a solid and complete explanation of verbs, along with all of the other grammatical elements. I just got done scanning the entire book, which gave me great context for deeper dives. If you are truly serious about learning Cebuano/Visayan, I have not yet found a better overall resource as a foundation. Scanning this book also helps you put into context the enormous undertaking involved in learning a language like Cebuano. Cheers.