Cebuano is spoken natively by the inhabitants of Cebu, Bohol, eastern part of Negros island, western parts of Leyte and Biliran islands, southern third of Masbate island and throughout the most of Mindanao. It is also spoken in a few towns and islands in Samar. Until 1975, Cebuano surpassed Tagalog in terms of total number of speakers, but Cebuano has still the most number of native speakers than Tagalog. Migrations from Cebu, Bohol, and Negros Oriental mostly to Mindanao and vice versa increase the Cebuano-speaking population of the Philippines. Some dialects of Cebuano give different names to the language. Residents of Bohol may refer to Cebuano as Bol-anon while Cebuano-speakers in Leyte may call their dialect Kana .
It is also spoken by Warays in Samar and Leyte, Porohanon in Poro, Ilonggos in Negros Oriental, Eskaya in Bohol, and by native (like Atas, Bagobos, Butuanons, Maranaos, and Tausugs) and migrant Filipino ethnic groups (like Ilocanos and Ilonggos), foreign ethnic groups (like Spaniards, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans), and other peoples in Mindanao as second language. Cebuano is a language with the Verb Subject Object sentence order, in which the first term in the sentence is the term given emphasis. Nouns and adjectives are joined by the nga connector with their order arbitrary as long as the nga connector in between them.