The First Words: Cebuano and Magellan’s Voyage

In March 1521, a fleet of ragged Spanish ships anchored off the coast of an archipelago that would later be known as the Philippines. While history textbooks focus heavily on the geopolitics, the planting of the cross, and the fatal clash between Ferdinand Magellan and the chieftain Lapu-Lapu, there is a quieter, equally profound discovery that often goes overlooked: the discovery of language.

Among the crew was Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian nobleman and the expedition’s official chronicler. While the sailors sought gold and spices, Pigafetta sought knowledge. In the midst of diplomacy and trade, he sat down with the locals of “Zubu” (Cebu) and compiled a list of words. This document—containing approximately 160 terms—is the first written record of the Cebuano language (and Philippine languages in general) by a European.

For linguists and language learners, Pigafetta’s list is more than a historical footnote; it is a time capsule. It allows us to hear how the “Language of the South” sounded half a millennium ago and offers a fascinating glimpse into the Austronesian roots that connect the Pacific.

The Venetian Scribe as a Linguist

Pigafetta was not a trained linguist in the modern sense; the field of linguistics did not yet exist. However, he possessed a keen ear and a humanist’s curiosity. He understood that to survive and trade, one needed to communicate.

His method was direct. He would point to objects, body parts, or acts of nature, ask for the local name, and transcribe what he heard using Italian phonetic spelling. This seemingly simple act is actually fraught with complexity. Pigafetta was filtering Austronesian phonology through an Italian ear. He had to decide how to write sounds that perhaps didn’t exist in his native tongue, such as the distinct glottal stops or the specific “ng” sounds common in Philippine languages.

Despite these hurdles, his accuracy was remarkable. When we read his Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo today, speakers of modern Cebuano (Bisaya) can still recognize the vast majority of the vocabulary. It is a testament to the stability of the language over five centuries.

The 1521 Vocabulary: A Comparative Look

Pigafetta’s list covered the essentials: numbers, family, nature, and the body. Let’s look at some of these entries to see how the language has evolved—or stayed exactly the same.

1. The Unchanged Basics

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the list is how many words have remained entirely untouched by 500 years of Spanish and American colonization.

• Pigafetta recorded: Tubig (Water)
• Modern Cebuano: Tubig

• Pigafetta recorded: Assin (Salt)
• Modern Cebuano: Asin

• Pigafetta recorded: Langhit (Sky/Heaven)
• Modern Cebuano: Langit

The persistence of these core nouns suggests that while distinct dialects formed and loanwords entered the lexicon, the grammatical and lexical core of the Visayan languages was already solidified long before European arrival.

2. The Phonetic Shifts

Analyzing Pigafetta’s spelling reveals how pronunciation might have shifted—or how Pigafetta struggled to transcribe specific sounds.

Take the word for “nose.” Pigafetta wrote it as ilong. In modern Tagalog, it remains ilong, but in standard Cebuano today, it is often ilong or irong depending on the dialectal depth, highlighting the interchangeability of the “L” and “R” and “D” sounds in Philippine languages (a phenomenon known as allophony).

Another interesting entry is the word for “rice.” Pigafetta recorded bughas for “polished rice.” In modern Cebuano, the word is bugas. The “h” in Pigafetta’s transcription suggests that the pronunciation in 1521 might have had a breathier quality, or perhaps he was trying to capture a glottal stop that felt like an aspiration to his Italian ears.

3. Cultural Insights through Vocabulary

The word list also serves as an anthropological tool. Pigafetta recorded the word for “God” as Abba. This is fascinating for several reasons. It could suggest a misunderstanding (the locals pointing to a father figure, as Ama is father), or it could indicate early contact with other cultures. However, he also recorded distinct cultural items like Campilan (a cutlass/sword) and Balanghai (a boat), proving that a sophisticated society with established warfare and maritime technology existed prior to colonization.

The Malay Connection and the Interpreter

To understand the linguistic landscape of 1521, we must address the “Enrique factor.” Enrique of Malacca was Magellan’s enslaved interpreter. When the expedition arrived in the Visayas, Enrique found he could communicate with the locals.

This has led to a popular misconception that Enrique was originally from Cebu. From a linguistic perspective, however, it highlights the role of Malay as the lingua franca of maritime Southeast Asia. Old Malay and Old Bisayan share the vast Austronesian family tree. Words like Lima (five), Mata (eye), and Hangin (wind) are cognates found across the Malay Archipelago.

Pigafetta’s list helps linguists triangulate exactly what dialect was being spoken. While Enrique spoke Malay to the chiefs regarding trade, the common words Pigafetta collected from the “heathens” (as he called them) were distinctly Bisayan. For example, he recorded the word for “dog” as Ayam. In contrast, the Tagalog word is Aso, and the Malay word is Anjing. This specific vocabulary choice places the expedition firmly in the linguistic geography of the Central Philippines.

Linguistic Resilience: 500 Years Later

Why does a word list from 1521 matter to language learners today? It challenges the notion that indigenous languages are fragile or inferior to colonial tongues. Despite over 300 years of Spanish rule—which introduced thousands of loanwords like kutsara (spoon), bintana (window), and sapatos (shoes)—the structural skeleton of Cebuano remains Austronesian.

When you learn Cebuano today, you are speaking a language that has survived empire. When you say Dugho (which Pigafetta wrote for blood, modern dugo) or count Usa, dua, tolo (one, two, three), you are vocalizing the same sounds that likely echoed across the waters of Mactan when Magellan’s ships first appeared on the horizon.

A Challenge for the Modern Polyglot

For those interested in historical linguistics, Pigafetta’s journal is available in digitization projects online. A fun exercise for language enthusiasts is to take his original Italian spellings and attempt to reverse-engineer them into modern Filipino languages. It requires an understanding of how Italians hear vowels and how Austronesians pronounce consonants.

For example, Pigafetta wrote Culan for rain. An Italian reads “C” before “u” as a hard K sound. The word is Ulan. Why the “C”? It is likely he heard a hard glottal beginning to the word, or perhaps a dialectal variant Kulan that has since faded.

Conclusion

Antonio Pigafetta’s primary goal was to record the glory of the Spanish Crown. Yet, his most enduring legacy may be his accidental contribution to linguistics. In scrawling down “heathen” words by candlelight, he preserved the voice of a people at the precise moment of contact with the West.

The “First Words” tell us that while flags change, maps are redrawn, and empires fall, the language of the people—the words for water, rice, salt, and sun—possesses a stubborn, beautiful immortality.