Diccionario Bagobo-Español Compuesto por el P. Mateo Gisbert de la Comañía de Jesús [Bagobo-Spanish Dictionary composed by Fr. Mateo Gisbert of the Society of Jesus]

Description

64 pp., softbound; Dom S. Aloys. Jerseiensis’ oval stamp; EXTREMELY RARE AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND – LACKING IN MOST COLLECTIONS.

This work is the first published dictionary of the Bagobo language of Mindanao, written by the Jesuit priest-scholar Father Mateo Gisbert (1880–1905) and printed in Manila (Magallanes, I y Sucursal Escolta, 12). Gisbert, who lived among the Tagabawa subgroup on the slopes of Mount Apo, was the first serious philologist of the language, meaning this pioneering study reflects the Tagabawa dialect. The Bagobo are an indigenous people famed for their textiles, beadwork, and metalwork, today numbering around 150,000 speakers across three subgroups. Contemporarily lauded by Combés et al. as the first published dictionary of any indigenous Mindanao language and a work of such quality as to secure Gisbert’s place among eminent philologists, it was complemented by his companion volume, the Diccionario español-bagobo (1892). The edition is exceptionally rare, with around a dozen institutional copies recorded and virtually no sales history in the commercial market for the last decades.