Course Title: GE 224 Ethnographic Literature

Brief Course Description: An introductory course on ethnographic

representations of diverse Filipino society and culture through literary expressions
and texts.
Time Period: Prelim
Instructor: Adrian Y. Franco
Lesson: 03
Topic: Languages in the Philippines

There are some 120 to 187 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending
on the method of classification. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages
native to the archipelago. A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties
generally called Chavacano are also spoken in certain communities. The 1987
constitution designates Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, as the national
language and an official language along with English. Filipino is regulated by
Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino and therefore serves as a lingua franca used by
Filipinos of various ethnolinguistic backgrounds.

While Filipino is used for communication across the country's diverse

linguistic groups and in popular culture, the government operates mostly using
English. Including second-language speakers, there are more speakers of Filipino
than English in the Philippines. The other regional languages are given official
auxiliary status in their respective places according to the constitution but
particular languages are not specified. Some of these regional languages are also
used in education.

The indigenous scripts of the Philippines (such as the Kulitan, Tagbanwa

and others) are used very little; instead, Filipino languages are today written in the
Latin script because of the Spanish and American colonial experience. Baybayin,
though generally not understood, is one of the most well-known of the indigenous
Filipino scripts and is used mainly in artistic applications such as on the Philippine
banknotes, where the word "Pilipino" is inscribed using the writing system.
Additionally, the Arabic script is used in the Muslim areas in the southern
Philippines.

Filipino is a standardized version of Tagalog, spoken mainly in Metro

Manila. Both Filipino and English are used in government, education, print,
broadcast media, and business, with third local languages often being used at the
same time. Filipino has borrowings from, among other languages, English,
Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Malay, Chinese, Japanese, and Nahuatl.
Filipino is an official language of education, but less important than English as a
language of publication (except in some domains, like comic books) and less
important for academic-scientific-technological discourse. Filipino is used as a
lingua franca in all regions of the Philippines as well as within overseas Filipino
communities, and is the dominant language of the armed forces (except perhaps for
the small part of the commissioned officer corps from wealthy or upper-middle-
class families) and of a large part of the civil service, most of whom are non-
Tagalogs.

There are different forms of diglossia that exist in the case of regional
languages. Locals may use their mother tongue or the regional lingua franca to
communicate amongst themselves, but sometimes switch to foreign languages
when addressing outsiders. Another is the prevalence of code-switching to English
when speaking in both their first language and Tagalog.

The Constitution of the Philippines provides for the use of the vernacular
languages as official auxiliary languages in provinces where Filipino is not the
lingua franca. Filipinos at large are polyglots; In the case where the vernacular
language is a regional language, Filipinos would speak in Filipino when speaking
in formal situations while the regional languages are spoken in non-formal settings.
This is evident in major urban areas outside Metro Manila like Camarines Norte in
the Bikol-speaking area, and Davao in the Cebuano-speaking area. As of 2017, the
case of Ilocano and Cebuano are becoming more of bilingualism than diglossia
due to the publication of materials written in these languages. The diglossia is
more evident in the case of other languages such as Pangasinan, Kapampangan,
Bikol, Waray, Hiligaynon, Sambal, and Maranao, where the written variant of the
language is becoming less and less popular to give way to the use of Filipino.
Although Philippine laws consider some of these languages as "major languages"
there is little, if any, support coming from the government to preserve these
languages. This may be bound to change, however, given current policy trends.

There still exists another type of diglossia, which is between the regional
languages and the minority languages. Here, we label the regional languages as
acrolects while the minority languages as the basilect. In this case, the minority
language is spoken only in very intimate circles, like the family or the tribe one
belongs to. Outside this circle, one would speak in the prevalent regional language,
while maintaining an adequate command of Filipino for formal situations. Unlike
the case of the regional languages, these minority languages are always in danger
of becoming extinct because of speakers favoring the more prevalent regional
language. Moreover, most of the users of these languages are illiterate and as
expected, there is a chance that these languages will no longer be revived due to
lack of written records.

In addition to Filipino and English, other languages have been proposed as

additional nationwide languages. Among the most prominent proposals are
Japanese, and Spanish.

According to Ethnologue, a total of 182 native languages are spoken in the

nation and four languages have been classified as extinct: Dicamay Agta,
Katabaga, Tayabas Ayta and Villaviciosa Agta. Except for English, Spanish,
Chavacano and varieties of Chinese (Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin), all of the
languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language
family.
 There are 4 indigenous languages with approximately 9 million or more native
speakers:

 Tagalog
 Cebuano
 Ilocano
 Hiligaynon

and 10 with 1 million to 3 million native speakers:

 Waray
 Bikol
 Kapampangan
 Pangasinan
 Maranao
 Tausug
 Maguindanao
 Chavacano
 Karay-a
 Surigaonon

One or more of these is spoken natively by more than 90% of the population.

A Philippine language sub-family identified by Robert Blust includes

languages of north Sulawesi and the Yami language of Taiwan, but excludes the
Sama–Bajaw languages of the Tawi-Tawi islands, as well as a couple of North
Bornean languages spoken in southern Palawan.

Eskayan is an artificial auxiliary language created as the embodiment of a Bohol

nation in the aftermath of the Philippine–American War. It is used by about 500
people.

A theory that the indigenous scripts of Sumatra, Sulawesi and the

Philippines are descended from an early form of the Gujarati script was presented
at the 2010 meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Philippine languages are often referred to by Filipinos as dialects, partly as a

relic of the inaccurate vocabulary used in literature during the American period
(1898–1946). While there are indeed many hundreds of dialects in the Philippines,
they represent variations of no fewer than 120 distinct languages, and many of
these languages maintain greater differences than those between established
European languages like French and Spanish.

Sources:
"The Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines - GOVPH".
Constitution of the Philippines 1987, Article XIV, Section 7.
a b "DepEd adds 7 languages to mother tongue-based education for Kinder to
Grade 3". GMA News Online. July 13, 2013. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
"Philippines". Ethnologue. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
McFarland, C. D. (1994). "Subgrouping and Number of Philippine Languages".
Philippine Journal of Linguistics. 25 (1–2): 75–84. ISSN 0048-3796.
The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino enumerated 134 Philippine languages and 1
national language (Filipino) present in the country through its Atlas Filipinas map
published in 2016.
Filipino, not English, is the country’s lingua franca, Inquirer, Feb 27, 2014
"[Republic Act No. 11106] An Act Declaring the Filipino Sign Language as the
National Sign Language of the Filipino Deaf and the Official Sign Language of
Government in All Transactions Involving the Deaf, and Mandating Its Use in
Schools, Broadcast Media, and Workplaces" (PDF). Official Gazette. Government
of the Philippines. October 30, 2018.
"Philippines". Ethnologue.
The regional languages are the auxiliary official languages in the regions and shall
serve as auxiliary media of instruction therein... Article XIV Section 7.
a b "Philippines – Education". CountryStudies.us. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
Article 93 of the Malolos Constitution reads, "Art. 93. The use of languages
spoken in the Philippines shall be optional. This use cannot be regulated except by
virtue of law, and solely for acts of public authority and in the courts. For these
acts the Spanish language will be used in the meantime."
Manuel L. Quezon (December 1937). "Speech of His Excellency, Manuel L.
Quezón, President of the Philippines on Filipino national language" (PDF). p. 4.
Retrieved January 14, 2009.
a b Gonzalez, Andrew (1998). "The Language Planning Situation in the
Philippines" (PDF). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 19 (5,
6): 487–525. doi:10.1080/01434639808666365. Archived from the original (PDF)
on June 16, 2007. Retrieved March 24, 2007.