The Philippines

Pilipino, which is based on Tagalog [ta-gá'-log], is the National Language of the Republic of the Philippines. It consists of two words, Taga and Ilog. Literally, it means 'from the river'. When the government took part in the development of a Common National Language, they had decided on one of the Philippines' existing languages. Tagalog was chosen because it was the main language spoken by the people of the capital city of Manila. Standards are set based upon "the preference of literate Manilans". As one author wrote, "We must have a standard, and Manila, being the sea where all rivers meet, let us take the resulting taste and consistency of the sea." Tagalog language was officially declared as the National Language in 1937 and had it's name changed to Pilipino.

Outside the schools of Manila, Pilipino is still referred to as Tagalog. It is the language of peoples living in Metro Manila and the Calabarzon Region, i.e., Calamba, Laguna, Batanggas, Rizal and Quezon.

It is spoken alongside English, an official and dominant language in education, government and commerce. In recent years, nationalism has introduced the use of Pilipino into the school curriculum and in government. The progress has been slow as English was the main language until recent years. Tagalog or Pilipino was taught as a separate subject.

Although it has attained the status of National Language, people living outside the Tagalog region speak their own native tongues. Today, more than 50 million people in the Philippines use it as their mother tongue or second language. Because of intense regionalism, some people look down on other people speaking another Philippine language. Hence, there is a great disunity among the people.

As a member of the Malay-Polynesian-Austonesian language, it is related to Malay, the languages of the Australian aborigines, Maoris and the Pacific Island languages, including Hawaiian. Due to foreign colonialism and trade among foreigners, Tagalog has words which originated from Latin, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Malay, and many more.

In learning Tagalog, one has to remember that we do not have aspirated sounds. Hence, the little puff of air you produce in pronouncing the English letters are absent. You will notice that when most Filipinos speak English, they do not pronounce words as you yourself would. They speak English like the Spanish.

Moreover, one has to remember the various affixes and stress tones or accents. As a rule, Tagalog is not a tonal language. However, a word may have a different meaning depending where the stress is placed.. Take the root word 'baga'. If said as baga, it means glowing ember. If said as bagá, it is used as an interrogative article. If said as bagà, it means lungs. If said as bagâ, it means a tumor in the breast. In written Tagalog, accent markings are not used. Hence, it is important to find out the contextual meaning of the word. For the purpose of this page, accent marking will be included.

In writing Tagalog, we use the Latin Roman script. I believe there was an ancient script derived from Sanskrit which was used a long time ago. No discoveries are made up to date. I first surmised about this when I visited the Philippine National Museum in 1995. I saw a pottery with 'foreign' inscriptions not native to the exisitng languages of the world. After visiting some web sites, I also discovered a written script called 'Cham' and 'Batak' which may have been used a long time ago.