Then, for the third time, its name was changed to Masbaranon because of the supposed abundance of small fish called masbad.

The presence of competing grammatical and lexical subsystems in the language is the most striking characteristic of Masbatenyo.

Masbatenyo shares different types of mutual intelligibility with its neighboring languages.

However, speakers of Cebuano, Waray or Hiligaynon would sometimes find it difficult to understand Masbatenyo because of its lexicon.

Zorc[9] made a subgrouping and reconstruction of the Bisayan dialects and included Masbatenyo in his work.

He stated that while it is true that there are immigrants from the areas that speak Bikol, Cebuano and Hiligaynon languages, the "native dialect" throughout the island is Masbatenyo.

[9] Regarding the duration of the Bisayan occupancy of the Central Philippines, Zorc reported that there are no pre-Hispanic writings that would account for their existence in the area.

In 2016, researchers from the Dr. Emilio B. Espinosa Sr. Memorial State College of Agriculture and Technology (DEBESMSCAT) together with the members of newly established Minasbate Language Society, composed of various stakeholders from Masbate, developed a working orthography on the language based on the discussions in the 1st Minasbate Orthography Congress.

The inclusion of borrowed terms in native Minasbaté vocabulary has resulted in the change in the structure of the language.

The particles san and sin are often contracted to the immediately preceding word if it ends in either a glottal or vowel sound.

The sound [ɛ] only appears in loan words from English and Spanish and occurs in free variation with [ɪ].

[3] The glottal stop /ʔ/ is the conventional onset of the orthographically vowel-initial words, thus vowels cannot occur in initial position.

[3] The diphthongs in Masbatenyo are: [aw] in sabaw 'soup', [ɪw] in agiw 'soot', [aj] in balay 'house', and [ʊj] or [ɔj] in baboy 'pig'.

Among these changes are: vowel deletion; contraction of particles san and sin, assimilation, metathesis, epenthesis and degemination.

But it can also be combined with certain affixes to form a process verb in: Nagdaragkó na an atáman 'His pet has grown already.'

It can also combine with a determiner, an, to form a noun in the context: Dilí ko nakita an pagdakó san báta niya 'I didn't see his child growing up.'

Masbatenyo employs the following operations in deriving new words: However, the existence of bare root forms of modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) in Masbatenyo can also provide evidence that root forms also have lexical properties.

Nouns can also be derived from other word classes by adding nominalizing morphemes or voice affixes.

'in front of' sinugbá 'smoked fish/meat' sugbá 'to smoke fish/meat' 'Masbate style' has the quality of Masbatenyo employs three types of possession strategies: Masbatenyo verbs, like verbs in other Philippine languages, are marked for their voice, aspect and modality.

Masbatenyo is marked for aspect to show the condition of the action; whether it has begun or not, and whether it is viewed as a process or in a static state.

These forms denote that the properties they exhibit are not derived from a process or those that are possessed innately by the thing being described.

There are three types of affixed forms in Masbaenyo: tibíhon 'person suffering from tuberculosis' tíbi 'tuberculosis' habitual action Masbatenyo modifiers are inflected by means of affixes for four degrees of intensity: basic, comparative, superlative, and intensive.

In Masbatenyo, intensive degree is expressed by the affix ka- accompanied by the non-obligatory particle man attached to bare forms (roots), e.g. Kaganda san boses ni Tinne.

Adverbial properties in Masbatenyo are rather expressed by clitic particles such as na 'already', pa 'still', ngáni 'really', kunó 'reportedly', etc.

The interrogative pronouns are sin`o 'who', náno 'what', pan`o 'how', san`o 'when', pirá 'how much', háin 'where', and diín 'where'.

Nano kay 'why' differs from the rest of interrogative words since it does not replace a noun phrase but an entire clause.

The indefinite pronouns can either be expressed in two ways: Amó is a general pro-form that can be used to replace any noun, verb, modifier, or even whole clauses.

The following are basic mathematical operations in Masbateño:[14] The following are advanced algebraic operations in Masbateño:[14] bangaw (big) Pulong Ko Yadto[15] Pulong ko yadto mato-od kag tunay An imo sa akon tuga na pagmahal Nano an nangyari kay imo guin bayaan Mga pangako mo san nag-agi na adlaw Mili kay sugad an akon kamotangan Imo guin bayaan, imo guin bayaan Nagtios sin labi na kasakitan Kay gusto mo ada na ako mamatay Kon dili pa lamang an akon paglaom Sa imo binilin na mga surmaton Di kunta nagios inin tagipusu-on Di kunta nasayang inin lawas nakon.