Pronouns are a bit hard in Cebuano. Let's take "you" as an example. In English, the word "you" is used for both "You are so beautiful" and "I'll kill you". The Cebuano language distinguishes between the two usages because in the first instance, "you" is the object, while in the second instance, "you" is the subject. Moreover, as in many other languages, a distinction is made between the singular and plural you.

As you can see, Cebuano makes no distinction between "his" and "her." Consequently even Cebuanos fluent in English inevitably get their genders wrong. They'll say, without realizing their mistake, things like "My brother and her wife are coming over" and so on.

There are two words that are essential in Cebuano, na and pa. The former means "already" and the latter means "still" or "yet"; together these two terms indicate tense and time.

Tense and time are also indicated by the prefix attached to verbs, which is mi for past tense and mo for future tense. The exception is when something hasn't taken place, when mo is used for a past occurrence (that hasn't actually occurred).

In addition, the form of negation also changes according to space in time. There are two forms of "no." While wala is for things that happened in the past, dili is for things in the future. Hence, the negative response to "Did you eat?" is "Wala" and the negative response to "Do you speak Cebuano?" is "Dili." Wala and dili can also mean "didn't" or "won't."

Describing things is fairly easy. The word meaning "very" or "excessive" (ka-ayo) goes behind the adjective. Otherwise, describe something by putting the adjective in front and using nga. If the adjective ends in a vowel, nga may be abbreviated into ng and attached to the end of the adjective. Now, nga is pronounced exactly as it is spelled, which makes it a bit hard for Anglophones. Practice by saying NNNG!Ha! and squeezing everything together as quickly as possible.

Let's try descriptive sentences. Use ang if the object being described is a thing, or si if you are describing something with a proper name, such as a person or a pet.

Similarly, "of" is either sa if the possessor is a thing, or ni if the possessor has a proper name.

Just one more lesson and you'll be up and running (or sputtering). You can think of "the" as being ug or sa. This may be confusing because both of these words have other meanings (ug means "and"; sa means "of" or "at"). Though ug and sa are interchangeable, it seems that ug is slightly more common, so I usually stick to ug.