Linguistic Study on Surigaonon and Kamayo Children's Songs

Abstract

This paper looks into the linguistic characteristics of the Surigaonon and the Kamayo languages of the Surigao Provinces through the children's songs. It aims to identify and explain the morphological and phonological features that bring about the intelligibility of the two languages. Oftentimes confused as the waya-waya or the jaun-jaun language, Surigaonon finds its speech community among the Surigao del Norte inhabitants as well as a few numbers in the municipalities of Surigao del Sur. Kamayo, on the other hand, is common among the Surigao del Sur inhabitants. Using convenience sampling, this qualitative study interviewed ten participants and recorded children's songs common for both languages. It found out that Surigaonon and Kamayo have to compete for forms and phonological differences. Both languages' morphological constructions differ with the use of some inflectional affixes and grammatical markers. The morphophonemic alterations between the different versions of the songs reflect the same kind of changes unique to the Cebuano Visayan language. As a result, Surigaonon and Bisliganon Kamayo are in themselves variants of the Cebuano Visayan since speakers from the languages can understand each other without really having to speak the kind of language each speaker is acquainted with: Kamayo language is intelligible with that of Surigaonon; while the latter is intelligible to the Cebuano language.