Traces and Roots: Exploring Lexical Rapport of the Bisayan and Tausug Languages

Abstract

Languages in a country are considered to share common characteristics and possibly similar features. This can be attributed to many factors, but one holds true, language is essential in keeping a community. Its vitality molds a society’s identity. The more active the language is, the more its culture gets the exposure it needs.  This notion goes two ways for culture cannot also stand without the usage of a language. In this study, Bisayan and Tausug lexicons were compared using a Samarin list to identify factors of similarities as well as their relationship in terms of their semantic and ontological categories. The list was subjected to a qualitative-descriptive analysis. The result of the study revealed that both Tausug and Bisayan (Cebuano) cultures have come from the same linguistic family. Both belong to the Philippine VISAYAN LANGUAGES. Of all the Visayan cultures, the TAUSUG is a Muslim dominated culture which makes it the reason why people associate Tausug language as part of the Mindanao language. The study showed that of the 200 lexicons used based on a Samarin list, 72 of those are true cognates and 28 are cognates with few differences and changes in the spelling. The findings also indicate that these similarities can be attributed to different factors like tracing language relationship by means of genetics, the environmental changes, the language sounds and language arbitrariness.