Maguindanaon (, Jawi: ), or Magindanawn is an Austronesian language spoken by Maguindanaon people who form majority of the population of eponymous provinces of Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur in the Philippines. It is also spoken by sizable minorities in different parts of Mindanao such as the cities of Zamboanga, Davao, General Santos, and Cagayan de Oro, and the provinces of Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, Davao del Sur, Davao Occidental, Bukidnon as well as Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal and Laguna. As of 2020, the language is ranked to be the ninth leading language spoken at home in the Philippines with only 365,032 households still speaking the language.
History
The Maguindanaon language is the native language of the Maguindanaon people of the province of Maguindanao located in the west of Mindanao island in the south of the Philippines. It was the language of the Sultanate of Maguindanao, which lasted until near the end of the Spanish colonial period in the late 19th century.
Thomas Forrest published a vocabulary of the "Magindano tongue" in 1779 as an appendix to A Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas, from Balambangan.
Other early works about the language by a European were written by Jacinto Juanmartí, a Catalan priest of the Society of Jesus who worked in the Philippines in the second half of the 19th century. Aside from a number of Christian religious works in the language,