Before the Spanish conquest of the Philippinse in the 1570s, Bikol was written with a syllablic script simliar to the Tagalog one, which was used to some extent until the mid-19th century. The Spanish used the Latin alphabet to write Bikol and one of the earilest Bikol publications was the Vocabulario de la lengua Bicol, compiled by Father Marcos de Lisboa, a Franciscan friar, between 1602 and 1611.