Gramática de la lengua de maguindanao según se habla en el centro y en la costa sur de la isla de Mindanao por Jacinto Juanmartí de la Compañía de Jesús. [Grammar of the Maguindanao Language as Spoken in the Centre and the Southern Coast of Mindanao]

Description

110 pp., original olive printed soft covers; l’École Supérieure de Théologie’ label, Seminarum Valsense, Bibliotheca Major’ oval stamp. EXTREMELY RARE AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND – LACKING IN MOST COLLECTIONS.

This very valuable work is the first published grammar of the Maguindanao language, written by Spanish Jesuit missionary Father Jacinto Juanmartí y Espot (1833–1897) and printed in Manila (Real 34). Juanmartí served as the Superior of the Tamontaka Mission in Western Mindanao for over twenty years, earning a reputation as a pioneer in Moro philology and anthropology. The text is divided into three primary parts: a detailed analysis of Maguindanao grammar (pages 7–90), an unpaginated section illustrating the Philippine Jawi alphabet with its Arabic characters, and a trilingual Spanish-Maguindanao-Malay vocabulary (pages 91–110) that highlights the significant linguistic influences of Malay and Arabic on the language. Maguindanao itself is an Austronesian language spoken by the Maguindanaon people, a Muslim ethnic group whose historic empire encompassed much of coastal Mindanao, giving the island its modern name through a Spanish corruption. Contemporarily praised by Combés et al. as skilfully crafted, Juanmartí’s grammar remained the authoritative work on the language for decades and was eventually translated into English by C.C. Smith for the United States Government Printing Office in 1906.