The Mellifluous Manobo Language

You don’t need to come here in Kulaman Plateau to hear the Dulangan Manobo speak in their own tongue. There are recordings of the language available online. One is in Youtube, and as you can see, I embedded the video in this post. Looking at the thumbnail, you might think that the video is an animated clip. It’s not. It’s just an audio recording with an accompanying still image.

I searched for the English transcript of the recording, but I wasn’t able to find any. I also searched for the English and Filipino versions of the video, but I wasn’t able to find an exact match. However, there are many similar Youtube videos from the same uploader. They were all created to help spread the story of Jesus in different parts of the world. When I listened to the video above, I immediately recognized Nemula, which is the Dulangan Manobo term for God.

Though I can’t fully understand the video, it led me to something much more helpful. Global Recordings Network has a set of audio Bible stories with corresponding scripts—in English! The organization produces, among other materials, audio recordings “that are designed for evangelism and basic Bible teaching to bring the gospel message to people who are not literate or are from oral cultures.” The recordings have a combined length of 27 minutes and 15 seconds. Each of the eight stories run only for a little more than three minutes and can be downloaded.

If you want to learn further the Dulangan Manobo language, you may check out the resources that I featured in this blog almost two years ago. The materials are from the website of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and included is a book that has translations of Manobo words in Visayan, Tagalog, and English. Dutu a de (good-bye) for now!