Molbog is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines and Sabah, Malaysia. Majority of speakers are concentrated at the southernmost tip of the Philippine province of Palawan, specifically the municipalities of Bataraza and Balabac. Both municipalities are considered as bastions for environmental conservation in the province. The majority of Molbog speakers are Muslims.
The classification of Molbog is controversial.[2] Thiessen (1981) groups Molbog with the Palawanic languages, based on shared phonological and lexical innovations.[3] This classification is supported by Smith (2017).[4] An alternative view is taken by Lobel (2013), who puts Molbog together with Bonggi in a Molbog-Bonggi subgroup.[5]
Sounds [dʒ, ɲ] occur as a result of loanwords from Spanish, Malay or dialects of the Sama language.
/h/ only occurs marginally. While it was generally lost in inherited words, it is retained in some words e.g. luhaʔ 'tears', probably through re-borowing.[6]
^Molbog at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Blust, Robert (2010). "The Greater North Borneo Hypothesis". Oceanic Linguistics. 49 (1): 44–118. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0060. JSTOR40783586. S2CID145459318.
^Thiessen, Henry Arnold (1981). Phonological reconstruction of Proto Palawan. Anthropological Papers, no. 10. Manila: National Museum of the Philippines.
^Zorc, R. David; Thiessen, H. Arnold (1995). Molbog: introduction and wordlist. Darrell T. Tryon (ed.), Comparative Austronesian dictionary: an introduction to Austronesian studies: Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 359–362.