Similarities Between Spanish and Cebuano

How close is Cebuano, an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines, to Spanish? Is it possible for a Spanish speaker to understand Cebuano? In this video, Danitza (Spanish speaker) and Miguel (Cebuano speaker) demonstrate some of the commonalities between the two languages with a list of words and sentences.

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The Cebuano language (Bisaya) is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines, namely in Central Visayas, western parts of Eastern Visayas, and on majority of Mindanao. Until the 1980s, Cebuano had the largest native language-speaking population in the Philippines. It 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. Geographically speaking, the language is spoken in the provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, Negros Oriental, northeastern Negros Occidental, southern Masbate, many parts of Leyte, Biliran, parts of Samar, and most parts of Mindanao, the second largest island of the Philippines. In addition to that, a large portion of Zamboanga, Davao , Surigao, and Cotabato’s population is Cebuano speaking.

Spanish is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, which has expanded to become the world's second-most spoken native language group of languages. Most of modern Spanish comes from Latin, with ancient Greek and Arabic also having an impact on the language. It has also been influenced by Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian, Visigothic, French, Italian, Occitan, Catalan and Sardinian, as well as from Nahuatl, Quechua, and other indigenous languages of the Americas. The Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Previously, several pre-Roman languages, unrelated to Latin, and some of them unrelated even to Indo-European, were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian. Today, Spanish is the official language of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.