Visayan

The Visayan or Bisayan languages form a subgroup of the Central Philippine branch of the Austronesian family, most closely related to Tagalog and Bikol. More than thirty varieties are spoken across the Visayan islands, much of Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago and southern Bicol; Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Waray have the most speakers. Linguists describe the group as a dialect continuum.

Before Spanish rule Visayans wrote in badlit, a syllabary related to Tagalog baybayin, and seventeenth-century Spanish chroniclers remarked on widespread literacy. The earliest European record is a word list gathered by Antonio Pigafetta during Magellan's expedition of 1521.

Under Spanish rule the Latin alphabet gradually displaced the old script, the priest Francisco Encina compiled a Cebuano grammar in the eighteenth century, and Cebuano speakers settled widely in Mindanao under Spanish sponsorship.