ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book is a product of the love and passion of the Bisaya language and its intent to preserve it. The authors wish to share this desire to fellow Bisaya and other Bisaya-Speaking tribes in the Visayas and Mindanao Regions where the Bisaya vernacular is widely spoken and understood.

This book, named Alforque's Bisaya-English Thesaurus-Dictionary is intended to enrich the user's vocabulary and mastery of both the Bisaya and English languages especially among speakers and writers who want to speak and write from Bisaya to English and to those who need rich reference to synonymous words in the Bisaya and the English languages.

This is an all-inclusive and exhaustive collection of Bisayan words, aside from the authors' knowledge, being a native Bisaya themselves. Meticulous consultations and referrals were made from people who are proficient and knew the language so well. This collection is also crafted through thorough research from several Visayan-English Dictionaries, Spanish-English Dictionaries, English Comprehensive Thesauri, and other relevant sources for accuracy in translations. Therefore, the authors do not claim total originality of the words included in the compilation of the entries in this book, except for their zest of producing a one of its kind, Bisaya-English Thesaurus-Dictionary in printed and digital forms.

In using this book as a ready reference or as a word finder, it is expected that this word treasury of synonyms will help avoid repetitiveness and improve word power through the right choice of words to achieve accuracy and efficacy of thought expression. However, this is not limited to speakers of Bisaya wanting to find appropriate word translation in English but could as well be a resource to learners of Bisaya Vocabulary as this offers appropriate selection of similar words.

Bisaya is written with Latin Alphabet consisting of 20 letters, representing 5 vowels and 15 consonants. They are given below in their traditional order and are used in the alphabetical listing and positioning of words in this thesaurus:

A B K D E G H I L M
N Ng O P R S T U W Y

The entry words are based on unconjugated root words, with no affixes. For example, dagan (run) is the main entry word. There is no more entry for modagan, ningdagan, nagdagan and daganon except the affix, ma and maka. Part of speech is indicated after the word since meaning changes according to use. Bisaya has only 3 vowel sounds, a, i, u as oppose to Pilipino or Tagalog, the national language, which has a, e, i, o, u. Thus, it is common to see spelling of words with e and i, o and u interchanged.

This may not cover all the Bisaya words, but it has put together over 8000 entry words that are most relevant and widely used.

Vivian Y. Alforque obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Management, specialized in Education at Lyceum of the Philippines University - Batangas. She earned her Master of Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She taught English and Science Classes in the Philippines and in New York City Public Schools.Anecito S. Alforque is an English College Instructor at St. Columban College and Western Mindanao State University in the Philippines for a long time in his teaching career. He completed Bachelor of Arts major in English and Philosophy. He is also a Marine Engineering graduate at the University of Cebu, Philippines. He is a speech writer in both English and Bisaya.