Philippines: a country study

Ronald E. Donald, author of Philippines: a country side, this book was first published in

1993 as the fourth edition. On the very first chapter, it clarifies many different features about my

native-homeland, Philippines. It provides many important historical events and backgrounds that

give detailed assessments. On the next couple chapters, it presents the population, culture,

economy, armed forces and any other related topics. Those things can be the possible way to

help us understand some events or circumstances of this country.

In this book, I chose the topic about Philippines ethnicity and language. This topic is in

chapter 2 under the society and environment. The main point of this chapter is to explain the

background of Filipinos like their culture and religions. It was explained in this chapter that

people look at Muslims as a different group because of their cultural and religious background.

Filipinos have known to have different kinds of unique ethnicity for centuries. And some of

those ethnicity are Chinese, Spanish, Negrito and American. Negrito was known to be one of the

earliest people in Philippines. But Malay was the one who developed agricultural stage into a

well developed or advance period. Two major things happened when Malay spread throughout

the Archipelago, first, they absorbed into intermarriage and second, scattered into separate

groups. Also one of the countries who influenced Philippines was Spain. They succeeded in

providing a good identity to the Philippines, however they didn’t completely destroyed the

influence of Muslim (only 5% of the total population of the Philippines) in Mindanao. And some

other Muslim remained unaffected by Christians and set their own religion and way of life.

Eventhough, Spain didn’t succeed on their aspect; they still strongly influence those lowland

tribal groups. Philippine nationality was appeared as mixed of different linguistic and ethnic
groups. Muslims and Chinese were excluded by Christians because they haven’t absorbed the

rule of intermarriage.

More things about Muslims:

In 1972, Muslim-Filipino (Moro) was recognized in many different places like Malaysia,

Indonesia, Libya and Middle East. Muslims are still deeply proud of their identities even though

they’ve been different and separated from other beliefs for hundred years. Moro structural

society was focused on a sultan (religious leader) who’s authorized by the Quaran.

Christians and Muslims were offered to be integrated into a better culture, so they would

be a normal Filipino who has their own religion and culture. But the Muslims disagree about it

because they think that this is just a simple and nicer way of asking them to assimilate. In spite of

that, Christians and Muslim-Filipinos are still clearly different from one another.

In the late 1980, there were 11 languages and 87 dialects in Philippines. Some of these

are; Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, and Bicolano. Tagalog is the national language of Filipinos. It

comes from the word “TAGA-ILOG” which means “native of”, “river”. In 1974, the government

organized a policy that Tagalog would be use in school, business and government instead of

English. In 1990 Late President Corazon Aquino direct that Tagalog should be use as

communication in all government offices even in 200 colleges. Now, government leaders hope

that Tagalog would be national language all over the world