Did You Know? Tagalog and Bisaya Are Spoken on This Indonesian Island

For many Filipinos, hearing Tagalog or Bisaya while traveling abroad can come as a surprise. But on a small Indonesian island just south of Mindanao, those familiar words are part of everyday life.

Located at the northernmost edge of Indonesia, Miangas is closer to the Philippines than to many major Indonesian cities. Over centuries, its position between two nations has shaped a culture that reflects connections across the sea, including a multilingual community where some residents speak Tagalog and Bisaya alongside Indonesian and local languages.

Miangas is a tiny island in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province, near the maritime border with the Philippines. It belongs to the Talaud Islands regency and is often described as one of Indonesia's outermost islands.

Despite its remote location, Miangas has long been part of regional trade and migration routes. The island's residents traditionally relied on fishing and seafaring, and generations of locals regularly traveled between neighboring islands across what is now an international border.

Its location has also made Miangas a cultural crossroads. According to the 2025 study A Study of Community Cultural Elements on Miangas Island, Indonesia, residents commonly use Indonesian and the Talaud language, but many are also familiar with other languages spoken throughout the region, including Tagalog and Bisaya.

The influence is easy to spot in the island's vocabulary. Researchers documented everyday Tagalog words still recognized on Miangas, including isda (fish), baboy (pig), and butug (coconut), alongside simple phrases used in conversation.

The answer lies in geography—and a long history of interaction with communities in the southern Philippines.

According to the book International Relations in Southeast Asia: Between Bilateralism and Multilateralism, people from North Sulawesi and the southern Philippines have maintained contact for centuries through trade, migration, and other forms of exchange. The book notes that many residents of Miangas once cultivated land in Mindanao and maintained business relationships with communities there. As a result, a number of islanders became fluent in Bisaya, Tagalog, and even English.

More recent research points to the same cross-border connections. The 2025 Miangas cultural study found that fishermen from Miangas and Mindanao often adapt to one another's languages while working at sea, making multilingual communication a practical part of daily life. The study also notes that some Miangas residents, particularly fishermen, have adopted Bisaya because of their interactions with Filipino fishing communities.

Those ties extend beyond language. Historical accounts cited in the study mention that older generations from Miangas regularly sailed to parts of Mindanao, while local agricultural products and seafood have long been traded with communities in the Philippines.