Cuyonon is a

regional In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...

Bisayan language spoken on the coast of

Palawan Palawan (, ), officially the Province of Palawan (; ), is an archipelagic province of the Philippines that is located in the region of Mimaropa. It is the largest province in the country in terms of total area of . The capital and largest c ...

and the Cuyo Islands in the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

.Palawan Tourism Council
Accessed August 28, 2008. Cuyonon had been the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

(language used for communication) of the

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

until recently when migration flow into the region rapidly increased. Forty-three percent of the total population of Palawan during the late 1980s spoke and used Cuyonon as a language. Later studies showed a significant decrease in the number of speakers due to an increase of Tagalog-speaking immigrants from

Luzon Luzon ( , ) is the largest and most populous List of islands in the Philippines, island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the List of islands of the Philippines, Philippine archipelago, it is the economic and political ce ...

. The Cuyonon language is classified by the Summer Institute of Linguistics as belonging to the Central Philippine, Western Bisayan, Kuyan subgroup. The largest number of speakers lives in the Cuyo Group of Islands, which is located between northern Palawan and

Panay Panay is the sixth-largest and fourth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total land area of and a total population of 4,542,926, as of 2020 census. Panay comprises 4.4 percent of the entire population of the country. The City of Il ...

Island.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Unlike most Philippine languages, Cuyonon only includes one close vowel. The close vowel only occurs in loanwords from Spanish, either directly or through Tagalog.

Simple greetings

*Good afternoon – *Good evening/night – *How are you? – *I'm fine/good and you? – *I'm just fine, by the grace of God – *Thank you – *Where are you going? – *What are you doing? – *Oh, nothing in particular. – *Please come in. – *Long time no see. –

Common expressions

Parts of the body

References

External links

Cuyonon Language and Culture Project
cuyonon.org
Linguistic map of the PhilippinesLinguistic map of the Philippines
Languages of Palawan Visayan languages {{CPhilippine-lang-stub