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The people you probably met are only from Luzon where Tagalog is prominent and Ilocano is mostly in the northern parts of Luzon, while the people who speak English, Tagalog, Waray, and Cebuano are mostly from Visayas and Mindanao
It depends. Cebuano speaker here, by the way. An Ilocano and a Cebuano talking to each other in a Cebuano-speaking area would use Tagalog. In Mindanao and most of Visayas, two Mindanaoans or Visayans whose first language isn't Cebuano would likely talk to each other in Cebuano.
- Why Do So Many People Ask this?
- Tagalog at A Glance
- Bisaya at A Glance
- Should The Language Be called “Bisaya” Or “Cebuano?”
- Where Is Tagalog Spoken in The Philippines?
- Where Is Bisaya Spoken in The Philippines?
- How Are Tagalog and Bisaya Related?
- Is Bisaya A Dialect of Tagalog?
- If I Can Understand Tagalog, Can I Understand Bisaya?
- So Putting Everything Together… Which Should I Be Learning?
People who want to learn the language of the Philippines often run into a choice of learning Tagalog and Bisaya. Of course, the two official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and English. Because, the readers of TalkTagalog speak English, most of them will want to learn Tagalog. But what is this “Bisaya” I keep hearing (sometimes referred t...
You might already know what Tagalog is. (If not, read our article: What is Tagalog?) Learning Tagalog for those dealing with people from the Philippines is self-explanatory. Most Filipinos can speak it natively or very well, probably around 60 million in a country of about 110 million people. But, practically all people from the Philippines can spe...
Despite Tagalog being ubiquitous in the Philippines, you may hear suggestions to learn Bisaya. Next to English and Tagalog, Bisaya is the next most widely spoken. There are probably close to 20 million speakers of Bisaya. The Bisaya comes from the Visayas, a cluster of islands in the center of the Philippines. The Visayas are one of three major geo...
You might be further confused by the word “Cebuano.” Is Cebuano the same as Bisaya? What’s the difference? Cebuano refers to the language of Cebu. Cebu is the most prosperous and populous island in the Visayas region. Because Cebu is such an economically important island in the Philippines, second in importance to the capital Manila, it’s no surpri...
Tagalog, in a nutshell, is spoken in Manila and the southern part of the island of Luzon, and in nearby islands. Tagalog is the true lingua franca of the Philippines, and you’ll be able to find a Tagalog speaker practically anywhere in the archipelago. For a full picture of where Tagalog is spoken, visit the article: Which Countries Speak Tagalog?
Bisaya is spoken in Central Visayas, the western part of Eastern Visayas, and in most of Mindanao. In fact, until the 80’s Bisaya had more native speakers than Tagalog. The swelling of population in Metro Manila and its surrounding areas, skewed the number of Tagalog speakers. Of course, there are lots of Bisaya-speaking communities and families ar...
Tagalog and Bisaya are quite closely related as languages go. If we are interested in how they are genetically related (I’m using word here ‘genetically’ as used Linguistics, not Biology as it’s more popularly used), we can see this. Both Tagalog and Bisaya are both Austronesian languages. Austronesian languages came from Taiwan thousands of years ...
It was previously taught in schools that in the Philippines that the main language was Tagalog, or more properly Filipino, and the other languages are dialects. Even, I was taught this as a schoolchild in the 80’s. This thinking is pretty old-fashioned. Since then, there’s been a lot of linguistic study on the Philippine languages. The way you dist...
The level of understanding will be similar to how much a Spanish speaker can understand Portuguese. A native Tagalog speaker will be able to get the general gist of what’s being spoken. A Tagalog speaker definitely won’t be able to understand everything, especially if Bisaya speaker is speaking very quickly. Meanwhile, a Bisaya speaker will probabl...
If you want to learn to be able to talk to as many people from the Philippines as possible, learn Tagalog. Even those who don’t speak Tagalog natively will be able to converse in the language, including business people, government officials, and those who have a standard educational attainment in the Philippines. There are many languages that act a...
People also ask
Can you speak Tagalog in Visayas or Mindanao?
Do Filipinos understand Tagalog?
Should you learn Bisaya or Tagalog?
Where is Bisaya spoken?
Sep 18, 2022 · At least eight major languages are spoken in the Philippines, found in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. If you want to learn at least one of them (Tagalog), we recommend you start your...
Visayans ( Visayan: mga Bisaya; local pronunciation: [bisaˈjaʔ]) or Visayan people are a Philippine ethnolinguistic family group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, the southernmost islands of Luzon and a significant portion of Mindanao. They are composed of numerous distinct ethnic groups, many unrelated to each other.
I'm from Visayas and it's fine if you speak in Tagalog, especially to the old locals naiintindihan din naman nila yun. But sometimes they prefer to respond in English kasi they're not comfortable speaking in Tagalog.
Philippines languages spoken in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Mountain of Siquijor Learn the dialect spoken by the peoples in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao just study on this page! While Filipino (Tagalog) is the official language of the Philippines, Cebuano is the most widely used vernacular in the archipelago.
