International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research Vol.8, No 3, pp. 34-46, May 2020 Published by ECRTD-UK Print ISSN: ISSN 2053-6305(Print), Online ISSN: ISSN 2053-6313(online) 34 ORTHOGRAPHY, SYNTAX, AND MORPHEMES IN CEBUANO VISAYAN NEWS EDITORIAL: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS Shangrela V. Genon-Sieras Department of English, College of Social Sciences and Humanities Mindanao State University, Marawi City, Philippines ABSTRACT: This study analyzes the inaccuracies of the Cebuano Visayan language in the SunStar News Editorial Dalaygon ang Kausaban. It aims to idealize the inaccurate orthography, syntactic system and morphemic structures of content words found in the textuality. Findings of the study reveal fifty-seven misspelled words which involve the use of inaccurate vowels, the absence of hyphens for glottal stops, and the lack of apostrophe in contracted words. Moreover, there are three inaccurate sentence constructions with a subject- predicate sequence instead of the predicate-subject system of the Cebuano Visayan language. Meanwhile, the morphemic structure of content words reveal that majority of the Cebuano words are formed by affixations that affect the grammaticalization of ideas and concepts. The study concludes that the Cebuano Visayan editorial of SunStar News reveals a textuality of inaccurate orthography, syntax, and morphemes. The study recommends the use of one common standard form of the language in mass media and in Cebuano Visayan language classes for linguistic accuracy. KEYWORDS: Cebuano Visayan, linguistic accuracy, linguistic analysis, pedagogic grammar INTRODUCTION Cebuano-Visayan is one of the major languages in the Philippines (Caturza, 2012 ; Dita, 2010 ; Linguistic Data Consortium, 2020 ; Pesirla, 2019). As a Malayo-Polynesian language, Cebuano Visayan is part of the Austronesian language family (Bell, 1976 ; Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2020). Also known as Sugbuanon, Bisayan or Visayan (Wolff, 1972), Binisaya or Bisaya (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2020) , Cebuano Visayan is a language spoken by two- thirds of the Philippine population (Pesirla, 2019, p. 1), making it a lingua franca in Central and Southern Philippines (Abastillas, 2015, p. 2) with more than 20, 000,000 speakers of the language not only in Cebu, Bohol, some areas in Samar but also in the regions of Mindanao (Cebuano Phonetics and Orthography, 2020). In Mindanao, where a large portion of the urban population in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Zamboanga and Cotabato are Cebuano Visayan speaking, Cebuano Visayan is also used as the trade language (Wolff, 1972) where Cebuano- speaking populations and populations speaking other languages are in contact. Despite the numerical majority of speakers of the Cebuano Visayan language, there have been many inaccuracies in terms of its spelling and syntactic structure especially on how the language is used in mass media. It is in this light that this linguistic analysis of the news editorial Dalaygon ang Kausaban (Dalaygon ang Kausaban, 2019) is made. This study analyzes the inaccuracies in orthography, syntax and morphemes in the editorial Dalaygon ang