Historically, it served as the official language of the Bolaang Mongondow Kingdom.
[3] There is some lexical influence from Malay and Ternate,[4][5][6] as well as the Indonesian national language.
[7] It is a threatened language, with a shift to Manado Malay in the younger generation.
[8] The moribund Lolak language has borrowed much of its lexicon from Mongondow, but appears to be more closely related to Gorontalo.
[9][10] Mongondow has the following phoneme inventory:[11] The lateral /l/ is pronounced as alveolar [l] when adjacent to the front vowels /e/, /i/.