In celebration of Asian-American & Pacific Islander History Month, we are bringing you a special guest blog post on the history of language in the Philippines by Pia Villanueva-Pulido!

Pia  is an award-winning English and Humanities educator for the Gifted and Talented, a storyteller, a published freelance writer, and children’s author. She was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up in Texas, and she calls herself a “Texapina” because she considers both Texas and the Philippines as her home. She lives in Dallas with her husband, her daughter, and her soul dog Mugsy.

Take your Asian-American & Pacific Islander History learning all the way back to the Stone Age with Jomon Unboxed and Mysteries of the Shark Hunters!

Multiple countries colonized the Philippines

The Spanish colonial period lasted 333 years from 1565-1898, then the United States for 3 years from 1899-1902, and Japan for 3 years during World War II  from 1942-1945.

Before the Spanish colonial period, Chinese immigrants from the Ming Dynasty controlled the Philippines for 276 years from 1368-1644. The British also briefly occupied the Spanish colonial capital of Manilla for 2 years from 1762-1764.

As a result, the majority of the Filipino population today are bilingual or multilingual.

There are over 120 languages spoken in the Philippines!

The Philippines is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. There are over 120 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Some languages are classified as dialects, which are particular forms of languages specific to provinces and regions.

The Philippines has 8 major languages: Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon (llonggo) Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, and Waraway

Two-thirds of the Filipino population are fluent in English

The Philippines finally attained independence from multiple colonization on July 4th, 1946.

The post-colonial era was marked by the growing influence of the English language, which began to be widely used in schools and communication with the government.

Many Filipino households began using English as their primary language and switched to Tagalog with friends and colleagues.

There are two official languages in the Philippines spoken today: English and Tagalog, the forerunner of the present “Filipino” language. Tagalog is spoken as a first language by approximately one-third of the population and as a second language by the remaining population. Two-thirds of Filipinos are fluent in English.

The Origin of Tagalog

The Filipino language is a member of the Austronesian (Southeast Asia and the Pacific) language family, which includes Malay, Maori, and Hawaiian.

It belongs to a subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian languages that are typically spoken by people in several island nations in the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia.

The word Tagalog, spoken by the majority of the Filipinos, is derived from the endonym “Tagalong-ilog,” meaning “river dweller,” taga- (“native of” or “from”) and ilog (“river”).

Very little is known about the ancient history of the language, although linguists have speculated that Tagalog came from groups that originated in Northeastern Mindanao or the Eastern Visayas.

The Filipino language incorporated “loanwords” from other languages.

Loanwords are words directly taken into one language from another one with little to no translation.

The Filipino language, due to its history of connections with the rest of Asia, and the influence of colonization, has developed a mixture of loanwords from a variety of languages influenced by Spanish, English, Sanskrit, Malay, Arabic, Chinese, and other Austronesian languages. Check out the video to learn more about Tagalog and hear it spoken!

Here is a brief chart comparing Tagalog, Spanish, and English: