Tausūg is spoken by about 1 million people in parts of the Philippines, in Malaysia, and in Indonesia, particularly on the Sulu Archipelago, the Zamboanga Peninsula, Southern Palawan in the Philippines, in Sabah in Malaysia, and in Kalimantan in Indonesia.
Tausūg a member of the Visayan branch of Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is part of Austronesian language family. Tausūg is closely related to the Butuanon language of northeastern Mindanao.
The name of the language in Tausūg is Bahasa Sūg, which means language of the Sūg where Sūg is taken to mean the area in which it is spoken (ie. Sulu). The word Tausūg is the name used colloquially where Tau means 'person' and hence Tausūg means 'person of Sūg' (Sulu).
These days Tausūg is written with the Latin alphabet, but used to be written with a version of the Arabic alphabet based on the Malaysian Jawi script.
Information about Tausūg compiled by Robert Cerantonio
Wayruun tuhan malaingkan ha Allāh, hi Muhammad in rasūl sin Allāh.
وَيْرُٷنْ تُهَنْ مَلَئِڠْكَن هَ الله هِ مُحَمَّدْ ئِڠ رَسُولْ سِڠ الله
There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
Information about Tausūg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tausug_language
http://iloko.tripod.com/Tausug.htm
Tausūg lessons
http://www.languagelinks.org/lessons/tausug/tausug.html
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Other languages written with the: Arabic script | Latin alphabet