The multi-awarded fiction writer played key role in using Cebuano-Bisaya to produce Cebu’s first native-language daily. He went into journalism but never left his first passion, literary writing. INFLUENTIAL literary…
The multi-awarded fiction writer played key role in using Cebuano-Bisaya to produce Cebu’s first native-language daily. He went into journalism but never left his first passion, literary writing.
INFLUENTIAL literary writer and Superbalita Cebu columnist Ernesto Degumbis Lariosa died on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, after two weeks of fighting an illness. He was 74.
In 2006, Lariosa won the second prize in the Gawad Komisyon’s poetry contest in Cebuano.
On Aug. 15, 1995, Lariosa wrote in his “Puyra Buyag” column that he accepted the offer of then editor-in-chief Pachico A. Seares to become the language consultant of SuperbalitaCebu, the first daily (seven-days-a-week) newspaper in Cebuano language.
As the second Cebuano-Bisaya writer to serve as language consultant of the paper, Lariosa, a native of San Fernando, Cebu, wrote “Tamdanan,” or guidelines for reporters and editors on spelling and Cebuano grammar. He was instructed to produce “Tamdanan” by Seares, who wanted a guidebook for Superbalita and other journalists writing in Cebuano–Bisaya.
An ‘experiment’
We were experimenting on the use of the native language in a daily newspaper, Seares, who implemented founding publisher Sonny Garcia’s mission for the paper, explained in an anniversary article in SuperB.
“We had no rules on grammar. We just told editors and reporters to be plain, direct and easy to read and understand. Cebuano-Bisaya then was thought to be verbose, windy and deep for most media consumers. The primary purpose was to communicate. The rules would come later.”
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