Each year that passes here in the Philippines (9 and counting!) increases my dismay at how slow I've progressed in learning Visayan. After only two years of living in China and Brazil my Chinese and Portuguese, though rusty, are still better than my Visayan. Why is this?

It turns out, Visayan is a surprisingly difficult language to learn, even compared to Chinese. The way it’s spoken depends a lot on where the speaker is from and – to some extent – his age. Young people in town often have difficulty understanding older people from just a ways up a mountain road. Visayan is mostly a vernacular. Until recently almost no one really studied it. They just spoke it. The form spoken in Cebu, known as Cebuano, is considered the standard, but everywhere else the language is spoken differently.

This isn't the only reason, or even the primary reason, it’s difficult. Sometimes Visayan feels like a Turing-incomplete programming language. Ideas that are trivial to express in other language can be difficult or even impossible to express in Visayan. This seems to be true not only of Visayan, but also for other indigenous Filipino languages, and even leads speakers to prefer to use English if they need to think about or discuss complex ideas.

Good Visayan study resources are also hard to find. One great free one is Tom Marking’s Cebuano Study Notes. Some of the words and grammar are considered “deep" in Dauin where I live. (“Deep" to Visayan speakers means the language as it is spoken by grandpa up in mountains but not by people in town. This is probably a more “pure" form of the langauge and it may be more common in Cebu, but that’s just a guess.)

Vocabulary is more than half the battle in learning a new language. To help with this I created about 400 Visayan flashcards over the years that are useful. I study these cards using Flashcards Deluxe on my iPhone. (It’s also available on Android.) Working through these cards for just a few minutes every day really makes a difference.

For grammar, probably the best resources to use alongside Tom's Study Notes are those produced by Philippines Department of Education. They have a long and growing list of Visayan study materials – and many other Filipino languages too – that are designed for school children, but are great for adult learners too! You have to register for the site, but it’s free.

If you know of any other useful resources for studying Visayan, please share them in the comments!

2015-12-09 Update

A just found a better option than my flashcards. Memrise has a vast number of language courses created by users. I just signed up for this Visayan vocabulary course. I might create my own course on here in the future. They also have iPhone/Andriod apps that sync with the website.