Cebuano

Alternative forms

• kuwan
• ku-an
• kwan

Determiner

kuan (plural mga kuan)

1. (relative) The (thing, person, action, or event) being indicated (at a distance from the speaker, or previously mentioned, or at another time).

   Si kuan kay nagkuan sa kuan sa kuan.

   That someone is doing it to that thing in that place.

Interjection

kuan

1. Used in hesitant speech, or to express uncertainty; um, umm, uh.

   Oy, kuan...

   Hey, umm...

Usage notes

• Used as a placeholder name when the object, person, time, quantity, quality, place, or action being referred to is temporarily forgotten, unknown, irrelevant, deliberately being avoided, or understandable by context to the people involved in the conversation. Roughly used in the same way as English whatshisname, thingy, somebody, something, somewhere, sometime, so-and-so, etc.
• The intended meaning can be narrowed down depending on the preposition or article used. e.g. si kuan will always refer to a person, while sa kuan can refer to a time, place, or thing (depending on context and its position in the sentence).

Mandarin

Romanization

kuan

1. Nonstandard spelling of kuān.
2. Nonstandard spelling of kuǎn.
3. Nonstandard spelling of kuàn.

Usage notes

• English transcriptions of Mandarin speech often fail to distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without the appropriate indication of tone.