Bagobo-Spanish Dictionary

After thoroughly studying the language of the Bagobos of Mindanao, in the Philippines, the Jesuit, Mateo Gisbert published in 1892 this Bagobo-Spanish Dictionary. His book is, together with

• Excerpt from mutsun grammar
• Etymologies of breed names of the Philippines
• and the Vademecum of the Cuban landowners,

One of the few linguistic texts on the languages spoken in the colonies of the then infinite Spanish Empire.
This Bagobo-Spanish Dictionary is the result of years of work in which Mateo Gisbert gathered the necessary material to finish his work.

When published for the first time, this small Bagobo-Spanish Dictionary, which with no little patience we have composed and ordered, we must remember, or beloved reader, what was already said in the prologue of the Spanish-Bagobo Dictionary, regarding the separation of syllables that exists in many Bagobas words, whose separation is indicated by a hyphen or small horizontal line, which will generally be between two equal consonants as for example in OD-DO GON-NAO, In whose words and in other similar words, the consonant sounds the same in the subsequent syllable as in the previous one, although in this is where the accent is especially loaded, trying to make the pronunciation clear and imitative as much as possible.
But this hyphen that separates some syllables from others when the spelling bagoba so requires, is not to be confused with the hyphen or horizontal line that in this bagobo dictionary we use, in order to make known the Roots in every compound word, and for this purpose we will use for this a hyphen of somewhat larger size. Thus in the word bagoba OD-DO = AN that has two hyphens the minor indicates how one syllable should be separated from another in pronunciation, and the major that separates the syllable AN that does not belong to the Root, makes known of course that in OD-DO = AN, room, the Root is OD-DO, inhabit, as in CA = RAMIT = AN, fear, it is seen that the Root is RAMIT, fear.

Fragment of the work