Days of the Week in Siargaonon

12 words and phrases, recorded by a native speaker of Siargaonon (Surigaonon), the language of Siargao Island in the Philippines. Part of Everyday Life.

Hearing it spoken

Written Siargaonon can only take you so far — the sounds are what give a speaker away. Two rules matter more than any other: the letter J is always hard, as in the English "jump" (never softened to a "y"), and many words that use an L in neighbouring languages use a Y here — ulo becomes uyo, balay becomes bayay. The pronunciation guide covers both in detail.

Every phrase on this page can be heard aloud, drilled with flashcards and quizzes, and scheduled for review in the free app.

Seven Spanish Days, Four Siargaonon Ones

Look at the list above and you can see three hundred years of history in it. Every weekday name — Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwibis, Biernes, Sabado, Domingo — arrived with Spanish and stayed. The seven-day week was not a local way of counting time, so the names came in whole with the calendar that carried them.

Now look at the words underneath. Kuman for today, Silom for tomorrow, Kahapun for yesterday, adlaw for day. Not one of those is Spanish. The borrowed words name the grid; the native words handle the part of time that people actually live in. That pattern repeats across the Philippines, and it is worth noticing rather than glossing over.

Kuman Does Double Duty

Kuman is listed twice above, as now and as today, and that is not an error. It marks the present stretch of time, and how long that stretch is depends on what follows it. Kuman na adlaw is this day — today. Kuman na duyum is this night — tonight. On its own it simply means now.

The frame is the same one that builds the greetings: a word, the linking particle na, then the stretch of time. Once you hear it here you will hear it everywhere, which is why it is worth learning the pattern rather than three separate expressions.

Asking What Day It Is

Uman na adlaw kuman? is how you ask. It opens with uman, the question word for what something is, then the thing being asked about, then kuman to anchor it to now.

Notice the verb-first habit at work even in a question this short: the asking comes first, the subject afterwards. English does the reverse, and that difference is the single most useful thing to internalise early.

Keep exploring

Is a word missing, or is something here wrong? This record is incomplete by definition — a living language is bigger than any one speaker. Tell us and it will be reviewed and added.