Bisaya

“ Distribution of These Peoples.—All through the central islands, Panay, Negros, Leyte, Samar, Marinduque, and northern Mindanao, are the Bisaya, the largest of these peoples. At the southern extremity of Luzon, in the provinces of Sorsogon and the Camarines, are the Bicol. North of these, holding central Luzon, Batangas, Cavite, Manila, Laguna, Bataan, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija, are the Tagálog, while the great plain of northern Luzon is occupied by the Pampango and Pangasinan. ”

“ Of the best works for the study of Visaya, or Bisaya, first dialect in the islands acquired by missionary and conquistador, wherein he gives 352 titles (p. xxix) , Retana has the following: “Up to a few years ago the dictionary held in highest repute by linguists was the work of the Augustinian scholar Alonso de Méntrida,” a vocabulary of the Hiligueina, or Hiligayno, and Haraya tongues—two of the three chief dialects spoken in Panay, not very different from the Visaya of Cebú, used, however, by the less cultured tribes of hillsmen in that island. ”

“ Finally treaties were made between the two kings and the Castilians. Alvarado was sent (May 28, 1544) to the Philippines to conduct back certain of the boats that had been sent thither when the expedition left the island of Sarrangan. At Mindanao, he was told of three provinces; "the first is Mindanao, and it has gold mines, and cinnamon; the second is Butuan, which has the richest mines of the whole island; and the third Bisaya, [34] likewise possessing gold mines and cinnamon. Throughout this island are found gold mines, ginger, wax, and honey." ”

“ When the noun is preceded by numeral adjectives, the singular keeps its form, as
usá ca táuo (one man) , napulò ca tauo (ten men) , usá ng̃a baláy (one house) , calim’an ng̃a baláy (fifty houses) .
Some adjectives do not admit the interfix g, for euphonical reason, as
of hubyà (lazy) , mg̃a hubya, not húgbyà, etc.
Case.
There is no inflection for Bisayan nouns to distinguish their different cases, as in Greek and Latin. ”

“ The appearance of these little savages excited the attention of the first Spaniards, and there are many early accounts of them. Padre Chirino, who went as a missionary in 1592 to Panay, begins the narrative of his labors in that island as follows: “Among the Bisayas, there are also some Negroes. They are less black and ugly than those of Guinea, and they are much smaller and weaker, but their hair and beard are just the same. They are much more barbarous and wild than the Bisayas and other Filipinos, for they have neither houses nor any fixed sites for dwelling. ”

“ Not less ruined are the Bisayas, as they are without stipends, and cannot be helped from here, since they have no boats which can resist the Moros, for the governor has not made a grain of powder nor a [338] single boat, although it is a fact that he has cost the king almost a million pesos. The fathers are compelled to go almost naked, and they have had to make shoes out of the parchment of their books. They have been assisted as much as possible, and already those missions owe thirty thousand pesos to the province. ”

“ NOTE.—There are in Bisayan forms resembling and equivalent in many instances to the Latin infinitive future ending in rus, in active, and in dus, in passive, as amaturus and amandus. Such Bisayan forms are those formed by the particle um combined with the interfix r or its substitutes (See page 20) , as:
cumaráon (one who is to eat)
caraonón (a thing to be eaten) .
Indicative. Ordinary forms. The present corresponds to the same tense, in English, and also to the Spanish and Latin imperfect past. ”

“ That portion of the Philippines called the Bisayas may be generally described as including the whole of the islands to the southward of Luzon, though, strictly speaking, it is understood to comprehend only those of Samar, Leyte, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol (with their dependencies, Tablas, Romblon, Sibuyan, &c.) , and four provinces—Misamis, Caraga, Zamboanga, and Nueva Guipuzcoa—of the important island of Mindanao, next to Luzon the finest and largest of the archipelago. ”

“ In the southern Bisayas, where the Spaniards first entered the archipelago, there seem to have been two kinds of natives: the hill dwellers, who lived in the interior of the islands in small numbers, who wore garments of tree bark and who sometimes built their houses in the trees; and the sea dwellers, who were very much like the present day Moro tribes south of Mindanao, who are known as the Sámal, and who built their villages over the sea or on the shore and [90] lived much in boats. ”

“ He visited his entire province whenever possible; and that which has always been most annoying to the provincials in respect to its visitation—namely, the province of Bisayas—was not troublesome to him, for he visited it. He did not hesitate at the suffering or the dangers of navigation, which at times is wont to be especially perilous, because of the many storms that generally invade the islands, and the not few enemies. He was considered lost, for he was not heard of for more than four months; for they wrote from the Bisayas that he had already embarked for Manila, and he had not arrived. ”

“ To the south of Luzon lie the principal islands of Mindoro, Panay, Marinduque, Negros, Masbate, Zebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, besides some very small ones, the whole of which we denominate Bisayas, or Islas de Pintados, Painted Islands, their inhabitants having been accustomed to paint their bodies before our arrival in this quarter. All these islands [6] acknowledge the Spanish government, and pay tribute to the king, which the corregidores, or Alcaldes Mayores of the provinces into which they are divided, collect. More to the south from these islands are Mindanao and Jolo. ”

“ Waray-waray is one of several languages called Visayan or Bisayan, and is spoken in the eastern part of the Visayas region of the Philippines, that is, the islands of Leyte and Samar, by, currently, about 2 to 3 million speakers. ”

“ There is no doubt but that the present governor will perfect these works, and that he will more eagerly check the boldness of the Morillos.2 That being done, the trade of Bisayas will again flourish, which is almost necessary for the conservation of this capital.
God has placed a very heavy hand upon our friends the English in their retirement. ”

“ Most of the tribes filed their teeth, and stained them black with burnt coconut shell; while among the Bisayans the upper teeth were bored, and the perforations filled with gold, a singular custom observed by Marco Polo in China, and which was also practised in ancient Peru and Egypt. Many of the tribes are spoken of by the early Spanish navigators as being endowed with fair intellectual capacities, possessing great powers of imitation, sober, brave, and determined. ”

“ The Indians embarked very willingly with the adelantado, for their greatest pleasure consists in cutting off a head. And they desired all the others to be subjects, since they were; and that no one should escape the fire, but that the law should be universal. Besides, the Bisayans were generally at war with the inhabitants of Manila—who were now Moros, through contact with Borney, and captured the former, since they were men of greater valor; and now the Bisayans wished to prove whether they could use their swords and cutlasses against them under the protection of Castilla. ”

“ The Tagál and Bisayan are the most widely spread of the languages of the Philippines, but each has such a variety of idioms that the inhabitants of different islands and districts frequently are not intelligible to one another, still less the indigenous races who occupy the mountainous districts. ”

“ Its point is equivalent to that of the English “slow, but sure.” “Guinhulat” (was awaited for) “uaráy” (was not) , “naghínay” (went slow) and “nagdágmit” (hastened) are contrasted. [119]
Metonymy. It is also found in Bisayan.
Example:
An patay palang̃it, an buhi pacauít.
Literally: let the dead go to heaven; let the living go to the “cauít” (a bamboo where the tubâ wine is ordinarily placed) . The figure consists in this word “cauít,” container, for “tuba wine,” the thing contained.
Synecdoche.
Example:
Pag árog hin damò nga bugás cay damo camí ng̃a babà. ”

“ The cases are determined by the prepositions and by variable parts of speech preceding the noun.
IMPORTANT OBSERVATION.
There are great many Bisayan nouns composed of the same letters, but which have different meanings according to the accent they bear. Of these are the following:
Transposition of accents.
The accent of a word frequently changes its place upon its transformation.
In the diminutives formed by repetition of the root or by the affix ay, the acute accent is always placed upon the penult. As
The grave accent of the root is preserved ”

“ The publication of a Bisayan grammar has been eagerly awaited by many. It has been desired by those who are interested simply in the study of a native dialect. It has been needed by all Americans who desire an acquaintance with the language of the people among whom they live in order that they may get into closer touch with the great mass of natives as yet unable to speak either Spanish or English. ”

“ Only the coast settled.The civilized natives live almost solely on its coasts, and there are also Bisayans who differ in speech and manners from the Bicols in about the same degree that the latter do from the Tagalogs. Roads and villages [220] are almost entirely wanting in the interior, which is covered with a thick wood, and affords sustenance to independent tribes, who carry on a little tillage (vegetable roots and mountain rice) , and collect the products of the woods, particularly resin, honey, and wax, in which the island is very rich. ”

“ The word “usa” is frequently contracted, especially in familiar language, by the supression of the last vowel. Thus:
[37]
In reading the numbers, the English way is followed, the particles “uga may” being sometimes employed especially in cases of large amounts. Thus, to read this number
987654321,
we would say:
“Casiyamán cag ualó cayocót, pitó cagatós caúnman cag limá caribo, ng̃a may upát ca yocót, tuló ca gatós caruhaán cag usá.”
NOTE—In Bisayan, there is no word corresponding to the English zero (0) . However, its figure is used in Bisayan. ”

“ Some conceal themselves in the chamber, and these become the Datos; others in the kitchen, and these become the slaves. The rest go down the stairs and become the people.
1 Pintados, or Bisayas, according to a native word denoting the same, must be the inhabitants of the islands between Luzon and Mindanao, and must have been so named by the Spaniards from their practice of tattooing themselves. Crawfurd (“Dict.” 339) thinks these facts not firmly established, and they are certainly not mentioned by Pigafetta ”

“ The nations of the Bisayas and Pintados, who inhabit the provinces of Camarines in this island of Luzon, and those of Leyte, Samar, Panay, and other neighborhoods, came, I have heard, from the districts of Macasar, where it is said that Indians live who make designs on and tattoo the body, in the manner of our Pintados. ”

“ But they almost universally talk the Bisayan, which is common and peculiar to Zibù, the head of the other provinces called Pintados. Those Indians [187] and the Caraghas, with their other neighbors, go partly naked; for they cover the lower part of the body, while they wear certain twisted cloths on the head in the manner of a crown, or the duliman of the Turks, but without the little bonnet that the latter are wont to wear. The women are entirely covered, while, to protect themselves from the sun and other inclemencies of the weather, they use curiously woven hats of palm-leaves. ”

“ The Bisayans call him Laon, which signifies “Time.” They are not far from our belief on the point of the creation of the world. They believe in a first man, the flood, and paradise, and the punishments of the future life. ”

“ The damage and robbery inflicted by the people of Mindanao in these islands could have been prevented if the garrison of Spaniards in that island, which held the pirates in check, had not been recalled. At present the need is all the greater, as they are encouraged by their victories, and our Bisayans are dispirited. In the islands where our humble Society of Jesus teaches, they caused great loss; and during the past month they attacked Leyte, and captured two of our religious, and more than eight hundred natives besides. ”

“ They inhabit a chain of small islands, which extends from Paragua to Borney; some of them are Mahometans, and others heathen. But they [all] cause much damage to the Bisayan Islands, which they ravage without opposition—going so far as to carry away, in the year 1672, the alcalde-mayor Don José de San Miguel, as we have related in another place. They have a great advantage in the exceeding swiftness of their vessels, which enables them to find their defense in flight. Their confidence and boldness reached such a height that they even dared to infest the coasts of the island of Manila. ”

“ The most numerous class of them are the Bisayas,18 (a Spanish name, from their [89] anciently painting their bodies, and using defensive armour) . These inhabit the largest part of the southern islands. Luzon contains several tribes, of which the most remarkable are the Ylocos, Cagayanes, Zambales, Pangasinanes, Pampangos, and Tagalos. These still retain their national distinctions and characters to such a degree, that they often occasion quarrels amongst each other. ”