1 Descriptive Analysis of the Surigaonon Language Francisco Perlas Dumanig Abstract This study describes and analyzes the Surigaonon language, an ethnic language spoken by people in Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur and Davao Oriental. More particularly, this paper describes in details the consonant and vowel sounds, stress, intonation patterns, and morphophonemic processes of the Surigaonon language. The data in this study were gathered from 100 participants of different age groups ranging from 15 to 70 years old. The data gathering was conducted using two methods: written communication and oral communication. In this study, some phonemic changes are described and analyzed. These changes are the results of morphophonemic changes, such as deletion, alternation, and metathesis. Furthermore, the findings of the study reveal that the Surigaonon language consists of 17 consonants with 17 sounds and 3 vowels with 5 sounds. It has also 25 clusters and 4 dipthongs, which are similar to the Cebuano language (Rubrico, 1999). Generally, the Surigaonon language is distinct as compared to other languages in the Visayas and Mindanao because it has its own consonant and vowel sounds, stress, intonation patterns and morphophonemic processes. Key terms: Surigaonon language, Surigao, phonemic changes, Surigaonon vowels, Surigaonon consonants 1. Introduction The Philippines is a multilingual and multicultural country, consisting of 165 languages and dialects (Constantino, 1998). In the latest survey of Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) it shows that the Philippines has 92 languages or dialects (SIL, 2003). Except for the Chavacano, a Spanish creole spoken mostly in the Zamboanga Peninsula in Mindanao, all indigenous languages in the Philippines are Austronesian (Paz, 1995). Across the country, there are at least eight major languages each with a considerable number of native speakers. These languages are Tagalog, Ilocano, Bicol, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Waray. Of these languages, only Tagalog, Cebuano and Ilokano are extensively studied. Most minor languages are not studied widely and a lot of them are still unexplored up to this time. One of the minor languages in the Philippines is the Surigaonon language which only few researchers have explored. The limited number of studies about the Surigaonon language is the motivation for undertaking this descriptive analysis of the Surigaonon language. This study focuses on the description of the Surigaonon vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, diphthong, stress, and the morphophonemic processes such as assimilation, deletion, alternation, and metathesis. This paper would be of great help in developing a description the Surigaonon language, which is believed to have no exact census figure of the total number of speakers (McFarland, 1981). However, a survey conducted in the Caraga Region (Census, 2002) revealed the approximate number of speakers of the Surigaonon to be 88,129, which is equivalent to 22.40% of the total population in the region. Suffice it to say that the data is misleading because of a high rate of bilingualism in Cebuano, a normal phenomenon in any multilingual community. McFarland (1981, p.16) argued that Surigaonon is similar to Cebuano and therefore Surigaonon is not recognized as a distinct language, since Cebuano is spoken as a second language throughout the area where most speakers have claimed it as their second language and others claimed it as their first language instead of Surigaonon. Although Surigaonon is typologically related to Cebuano and other languages in the region, it is deemed necessary to say that Surigaonon language is entirely a distinct language because of its different characteristics and linguistic properties.