Cebuano has seventeen consonants: p, t, k,
ʔ (the glottal stop), b, d, g, m, n, ng, s, h, w, l, r, y, and j (also spelled gy or dy). There are four vowels: i, e, a, and u/o. The vowels
u and
o are allophones, with
u always being used when it is the beginning of a syllable, and
o always used when it ends a syllable. But there are some exceptions, like
kamatuoran (truth) and
hangtúd (until). "E" originally appears only in few words such as "babaye" (girl/woman), "dayeg" (praise, complement), "gane" (he said, she said, they said, it was said, allegedly, reportedly, supposedly), "parayeg" (loving), and "pangadye" (prayer) and only in last syllables as "E" was mostly an allophone of "I" in final syllables. When Spanish arrived, more words with
e has been added with the introduction of loanwords. Accent is also a distinguisher of words, so that
dápit means "to invite", while
dapít means "near" or "nearby place". Consonants
[d] and
[ɾ] were once allophones, but cannot interchange, like
kabungturan (uplands) [from
bungtód , mountain] is correct but not
*kabungtudan and
tagadihá (from there) [from
dihá , there] is correct but not
*tagarihá .
