About Matigsalug Manobo

The Matigsalug Manobo language is spoken by around 50,000 people on the island of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. The Matigsalug people have been granted an ancestral land domain of some 102,000+ hectares situated on the corners of the provinces of Bukidnon, North Cotabato, Davao City and Davao Del Norte.

Matigsalug is one of around twenty different languages in the Manobo family.

Most Matigsalugs are bilingual in Cebuano, the regional trade language, to some degree -- more so near the roads and highways than in the less accessible parts.

Some Matigsalug families raise their children speaking Cebuano as their mother-tongue, especially those along the highway and/or if one of the couple is non-Matigsalug. However, this is the minority and the Matigsalug language does not seem to be in any imminent danger of dying out.

The three mother-tongue translators who worked for the Matigsalug Bible Translation Project (MBTP) are shown below:

Picture of Matigsalug