BySuroy Playdesk
OnSeptember 22, 2026

Langgam Has Wings Here: Ten Bisaya Words, One Quiz

InCebu, Culture, Travel Hacks
Read Time7 mins

Share your love

The word is langgam. In Manila it is an ant. In Cebu it has wings. A visitor who learned Filipino from a phrasebook lands at Mactan with a vocabulary that is about seventy percent useful and thirty percent quietly wrong, and nobody will correct them, because Cebuanos are polite and the confusion is funnier left alone.

Ten words, three possible meanings each, about two minutes. No sign up and nothing is stored. The words are the ones a traveler actually hears in a week here: from the habal-habal driver, the fruit stall, the lola at the next table. The result tells you which ear you have been listening with.

Suroy.ph Playdesk

How Bisaya is your ear?

Ten words you will hear in Cebu. Pick what each one means. Nothing is sent or stored.

You ask a habal-habal driver how far the falls are. He says “duol ra.”

There is a dual carriageway ahead.

It is near. In Cebu that is a feeling, not a distance.

Keep going, you are on the right road.

At a fruit stall you point at the mangoes and say “pila ni?” What did you just ask?

Where the line for these starts.

Whether they sell them by the pile.

How much these cost.

A child points at the sky and shouts “langgam!”

A bird.

An ant. An extremely ambitious one.

Something in the local language, obviously. Nod.

A hand-painted sign outside a sari-sari store says “palit dinhi.”

Money changer. Exchange your dollars here.

Buy here.

Pallet pickup point.

Your new friend looks at the ferry schedule and says “nalibog ko.”

Their leg hurts from the plastic chairs.

Something a Manila friend will pretend not to have heard.

They are confused. So is everyone. It is a ferry schedule.

A stranger at the pier greets you with “bai.”

Friend. Bro. You have been accepted before you said a word.

Bye. He is leaving.

Buy. He would like you to buy something.

Every third word out of the driver’s mouth is “kuan.”

A man named Juan, pronounced with the accent.

The all-purpose placeholder. Thingy. The word for the word he cannot find.

A town called Kuan. You will be there soon.

The tricycle driver holds up fingers and says “tulo.”

Something is leaking. Check under the seat.

There is a toll booth coming up.

Three. Passengers, or tens of pesos. Ask which.

You say you will come back next year. The lola says “puhon.”

Hopefully. God willing. The word for a promise nobody controls.

Depends on the season, like panahon.

A very polite way of saying please do not.

She pushes the humba toward you and says “lami kaayo.”

That it is lame, and she has strong feelings about it.

That it has gone cold and needs reheating.

That it is very delicious. Agree immediately and eat.

Ten Bisaya words that carry a whole trip

Cebuano, which everyone in Cebu simply calls Bisaya, is spoken across Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, eastern Negros, Leyte’s west, and most of Mindanao. It is not a dialect of Tagalog. The two share Spanish loanwords and a grammar family and then part ways on most of the everyday vocabulary, which is exactly where a visitor gets caught. These are the ten to learn before the taxi leaves the airport.

Bisaya	What it means	Where you will hear it
Salamat / daghang salamat	Thank you / thank you very much	Everywhere. Say it to everyone.
Pila?	How much? How many?	Markets, tricycles, anywhere without a price tag
Asa?	Where? (as in where to, which way)	“Asa ang CR?” is where the bathroom is. CR is comfort room.
Duol ra / layo	Near / far	Directions. Treat duol ra as an opinion.
Lami	Delicious	Any table. “Lami kaayo” is very delicious.
Kaon ta	Let’s eat	An invitation and a courtesy. See the etiquette note below.
Oo / dili / wala	Yes / no / none	Wala is the answer to “is there any” and to “do you have change.”
Palihug	Please	Attach it to any request and the tone changes.
Kuan	The placeholder word	Every sentence, from everyone. It is not a place.
Amping	Take care	How people say goodbye to someone they like.

Three that did not fit the table and should: maayong buntag, maayong hapon and maayong gabii for good morning, afternoon and evening. Wala ko kasabot for I do not understand. And tubig, water, which is worth knowing on any island in August.

The false friends: Bisaya words that mean something else in Tagalog

This is the table that catches visitors who already speak some Filipino. The words look and sound identical. The meanings are not, and two of them are the kind of mistake people remember.

Word	In Bisaya	In Tagalog
Langgam	Bird	Ant
Pila	How much, how many	A line, a queue
Palit	To buy	To change, to exchange
Tulo	Three	A drip, a leak
Libog	Confused	Aroused. Do not test this in a meeting.
Asa	Where (to)	To hope, to rely on
Uban	Companion, together with	Gray hair
Baba	Mouth	Chin, or down

The uban one is worth a second look. “Uban ko nimo” in Cebu means I will come with you. A Tagalog ear hears something about gray hair and wonders what it did to deserve the remark.

How to say the basics in Bisaya

The short version, for the phone’s notes app. Pronunciation is flat and every syllable is said; there is no silent anything.

You want to say	Say
Good morning	Maayong buntag
How much is this?	Pila ni?
Where is the bathroom?	Asa ang CR?
Water, please	Tubig, palihug
I do not understand	Wala ko kasabot
That is delicious	Lami kaayo
No thank you, I am full	Dili na, salamat. Busog na ko
Take care	Amping
Hopefully, someday	Puhon

Four things nobody puts in the phrasebook

Kaon ta is a courtesy first and an invitation second. Anyone eating near you will say it. The polite answer is “sige, salamat,” and you do not sit down unless they push a chair out and say it again. If they say it three times, they mean it, and you should.

Bai has a sister. Bai is for men and between friends of any gender in casual use; day, pronounced dai, is the everyday address for a woman. Both are warm. Neither is rude. A vendor calling you day is being friendly, not familiar.

Gyud makes anything stronger. Lami gyud is really delicious. Layo gyud is really far, and when a driver says it, believe him over the man who said duol ra.

Everyone will switch to English anyway. Cebu’s English is fluent and constant, and most people will answer a Bisaya question in English out of kindness. The point of learning ten words is not to get by. It is the look on the face of the person you said them to.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bisaya the same as Cebuano?

In Cebu, yes. Cebuano is the linguists’ name and Bisaya, or Binisaya, is what speakers call it. Strictly, Bisaya covers a family of Visayan languages that also includes Hiligaynon in Iloilo and Bacolod and Waray in Samar and eastern Leyte, and those are different languages, not accents. Learn the Cebu words and they work in Bohol, Siquijor, Dumaguete and most of Mindanao.

Do people in Cebu speak Tagalog?

Most understand it from school and television and many speak it well, though not always happily. English is the more comfortable second language for a lot of Cebuanos, and it is the one visitors should default to before Tagalog. A few Bisaya words on top of that goes a long way.

Is it rude to speak Tagalog in Cebu?

Not rude, but it is noticed. Cebu has a long, mostly good-humored rivalry with Manila, and a visitor who tries Bisaya first, even badly, gets a warmer reception than one who assumes Tagalog is the national default everywhere. The Cebuano and Manileño culture clash covers the rivalry, and the Gen Z Cebuanos guide has the slang the table above is too old for.

Where can a visitor practice?

A pungko-pungko stall is the best classroom in the city: cheap, communal, and nobody minds a foreigner asking pila. A jeepney ride is the second best, because “lugar lang” and “palihug” are the whole exam.

More games and quizzes live in the Suroy Arcade.

Suroy Wear · Statement Series

Suroy Wear Padayon Shirt in black, back print

One word you did not need a quiz for.

Padayon: keep going. The Bisaya word people say to each other when the ferry is canceled and the rain is sideways. On a black tee, ₱999.

Wear the story