Eskayan language
| Eskayan | |
|---|---|
| Bisaya Iniskaya Eskayano | |
| Created by | Mariano Datahan Attributed to Pinay, ancestor of the Eskaya people |
| Date | ca. 1920–1940 |
| Setting and usage | Song, prayer, teaching, reproduction of traditional literature. Intended to establish a distinct indigenous culture on the island of Bohol in the Philippines. |
| Ethnicity | 3,000 (2013) |
| Users | 550 (2013) |
| Purpose | Cultural auxiliary language |
| Eskayan script (syllabary) | |
| Sources | Encryption of Cebuano, with lexical influence from Spanish and English |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | esy |
| Glottolog | eska1234 |
Eskayan is an artificial auxiliary language of the Eskaya people of Bohol, an island province of the Philippines. Its grammar is structurally similar to Visayan-Boholano, the native language of Bohol, with a lexicon that shows little relationship to any Philippine languages. While Eskayan has no mother-tongue speakers, it is taught by volunteers in at least three cultural schools in the southeast interior of the province.
Eskayan has a number of idiosyncrasies that have attracted wide interest. One of its most immediately remarkable features is its unique writing system of over 1,000 syllabic characters, said to be modeled on parts of the human body, and its non-Philippine lexicon.
The earliest attested document in Eskayan provisionally dates from 1908, and was on display at the Bohol Museum until September 2006.