Cebuano phonology

Cebuano has 21 phonemes. There are 16 consonants: p, t, k, (the glottal stop), b, d, g, m, n, ng, s, h, w, l, r and y. There are five vowels: i, e, a, o and u.

Vowels
Below is the vowel system of Cebuano:


 * an open front unrounded vowel similar to English "father".
 * an open-mid front unrounded vowel similar to English "bed".
 * a close front unrounded vowel similar to English "machine".
 * a close-mid back rounded vowel similar to English "forty".
 * a close back unrounded vowel similar to English "flute".

During the precolonial and Spanish period, Cebuano had three vowel phonemes:, and. This was later expanded to five vowels with the introduction of Spanish entries. The vowels o and u are still mostly allophones, however, with u always being used when it is the beginning of a syllable and o always used when it ends a syllable. But there are some exceptions, like kamatuoran (truth) and hangtúd (until). "E" originally appeared only in a few words, such as "babaye" (girl/woman), "dayeg" (praise, compliment), "parayeg" (loving), and "pangadye" (prayer), and only in last syllables, as "E" was mostly an allophone of "I" in final syllables. Under the influence of Spanish, more words with e have been added with the introduction of loanwords.

Consonants
Below is a chart of Cebuano consonants. All the stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions including at the beginning of a word.

Stress
Stress accent is phonemic, so that dápit means "act of inviting", while dapít means "near" or "nearby place". Consonants ' and ' were once allophones, but cannot interchange, like kabungturan (uplands) [from bungtód, mountain] is correct but not *kabungtudan and tagadihá (from there) [from dihá, there] is correct but not *tagarihá.