Languages in the Philippines

There are many languages in the Philippines such as: Finontok, Bikol, Waray, Hiligaynon, llokano, Sebwano,
Pangasinan, Itawit, Kinamayu, Sinama, Yakan, Sug Bahasa, Meranaw, Finallig, Bolinaw, Kapampangan and many
others (1).
Some sources confirm that there are 168 locally spoken languages in the archipelago, of which little is historically
known. The most concrete evidence we have is the Christian doctrine, the first work ever obtainable to be obtained
published in the country since 1593 and contains a translation of religious material in the local Filipino script (Alibata),
Spanish and Old Tagalog (2).
Alibata is considered an old Filipino text, which is no longer widely used except for a few sites in the country.
Ancient Tagalog evolved into the neo-Filipino alphabet, now consisting of 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and an
ancient Filipino believed to have originated from an ancient Javanese Kawi. There are many theories about where it
actually originated. It is also believed that it originated from India. Alibata is believed to have been used in the early
fourteenth century until the late nineteenth century when the Spaniards began colonizing the Philippines (3).
Although the major languages of the Philippines are now written using the Roman alphabet, the languages were first
represented using text linked to the texts of India and derived directly or indirectly from them. The text has a rather
short history, beginning to be used around 1000-1200 AD. Most of it became extinct in the late eighteenth century.
However, there are still two forms of original texts to this day by Tagpanwa of Palawan, and the text used by Manjian
from Mindoro Island In fact, however, the origin of the text has not been confirmed, and various theories abound about
it (4).
The development of the national language can be traced back to Article 14 of the 1935 Constitution, Section 3 which
states that "Congress shall take the necessary steps toward the development of a national language based on one of the
existing indigenous languages." It is for this reason that then-Philippine President
Manuel Quezon was invited. To develop a national language that unites the entire country. Two years later, it was
recommended to use Tagalog as the basis of the national language, which was later officially named Pilipino in the
1987 Constitution, Article 14, Section 6, states that "the national language of the Philippines is Filipino (5).
In the 1987 Constitution, Article 14, Section 6, states that the national language of the Philippines is the Filipino
language and shall be developed and enriched on the basis of Filipino languages with other languages that exist until
now, the Filipino language taught in schools is Tagalog, which is the dominant language used in the archipelago (6).
All Philippine languages belong to the West Polynesian Malay language group of the Austronesian language family.
The archaeological record indicates that the earliest Austronesian speakers arrived in the northern Philippines, probably
from what is now Taiwan about 5,500 years ago, at the beginning of migrations that later transported them to the Indo-
Malaysian archipelago, and eventually to the Pacific Ocean. Since the time of the first Austronesian habitation in the
Philippines, the native language has varied into a number of fairly clearly defined subgroups ( 7).
Of the 167 Filipino ethnolinguistic groups, at least ten languages are spoken by more than one million people, and what
are referred to as the main languages of the Philippines are Tagalong, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Samarlit,

1 ) Earvin Christian T. Pelagio, Philippine Languages and Dialects, Filipino Language Commission, Philippines August 2013, P.4.
2 ) Gordon, Raymond G, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Texas. 2005, P. 12.
3 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, ibid, p. 131.
4 ) Christopher Miller, A Gujarati Origin for Scripts of Sumatra, Sulawesi and the Philippines, Linguistic Society of America. California, 2010 p.

277.
5 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, Ibid, p. 131.
6 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, ibid, p. 131.
7 ) Lawrence A. Reid, Tagalog and Philippine Languages, ScholarSpace at Unive1rsity of Hawai'i at Manoa. 2005. P. 1.
Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Marano and Magdano. The first four of these languages are of great importance to Filipinos
(8).
Tagalog, which has 15 million native speakers, is the mother tongue of Manila and a number of neighboring provinces.
It is also the basis of the national language, now known as Filipino. Moreover, it has become the main language of
movies and comics and a lot of Philippine media and the language to be taught in all schools in the Philippines, and has
quickly become the second language and Hiligaynon It is spoken on a
major scale that is spoken by people across the country. Cebuano and Ilokano are parts of northern Luzon
as regional trading languages. Llokano is the main language of commerce and communications The broadest used in all
is also spoken in some areas of southern Mindanao and is the main Filipino language spoken in the United States and
other countries to which Filipinos have immigrated. Cebuano is used not only in the Visayan region of the central
Philippines, but also in Most of the south in Mindanao people also speak the Hiligaynon language in some parts of
southern Mindanao (9). The languages prevailing among Muslims in the Philippines are two languages: Tausso, which
is close to Indonesian, and Murtao predominantly on the island of Mindanao, (10) many Arabic words, and written in
Arabic letters and is the second Arabic language for them (11) and includes According to the Bureau of National
Statistics of the Philippine government, there are more than 180 local languages and dialects used in the Philippines in
addition to English. This complete list of Filipino languages is based on Filipino ethnicities (2021) (12).
Table (1) presents data collected through the 2000 census conducted by the Bureau of National Statistics, Government
of the Philippines, on the Philippine languages spoken by at least one per cent of the population. (13)

Languages Number of
speakers
Tagalog 22,000,000
Cebuano 20,000,000
Llokano 7,700,000
Hiligaynon 7,000,000
Waray-Waray 3,100,000
Capampangan 2,900,000
Northern Bicol 2,500,000
Chavacano 2,500,000
Table showing the languages spoken in the Pangasinan 1,540,000 Philippines for a population of at least 1%
(14) Southern Bicol 1,200,000
Maranao 11,500,000
Multilingualism in the Philippines
Maguindanao 1,100,000
Thus, it can also be said that the Kinaray-a 1,051,000 Philippines is a multilingual country,
attributing the diversity of its Tausug 1,022,000 languages to the cultures of its
people, and studies show that Surigaonon 600,000 language and culture are interrelated
and that one has an influence on the Masbateño 530,000 other - a reciprocal relationship
between the two (15). Aklanon 520,000
Ibanag 320,000

8 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, Ibid, p. 131.
9 ) Lawrence A. Reid, ibid, P. 1.
10 ) Almoataz Muhammad Nasser Abdullah Yassin Historical and Civilizational Developments in Korea and the Philippines Journal of t he Faculty

of Arabic Language, Itay Al-Baroud, um Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, Issue 35, Fourth Edition, April 2022, p. 1.
11 ) Mahmoud Qamar: Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia appointed for human and social studies and research, 2003, p. 65.
12 ) Claribel C. Concepcion, The Multilingual Situation in the Philippines: A Brief Report,Ateneo de Zamboanga University, Ph.d Thesis,

Philippines, 2021. P. 40-44.

13 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, ibid. P. 132.
14 ) Rachel Edita Roxas, Charibeth Cheng & Nathalie Rose Lim, ibid. P. 132.
15 ) Mahadi, T., & Jafari, S. Language and culture. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, USA, 2012. P.234.
The Philippines is a melting pot of cultures, there are a large number of naturally clear languages and dialects. The
researchers reported that 185 indigenous and non-indigenous languages, four of which are extinct, can be found in the
Philippines, and the most important of these languages are the following: (16)
CEBUANO Language
Cebuano as an important language of the Philippines, Cebuano is an Austronesian language spoken by about 20 million
people in the Philippines. Indigenous Cebuano Speakers make up about a quarter of the Philippine population and
therefore constitute the largest linguistic and cultural group in the country (17).
These people, who were once the largest ethnic group in the country, are now only after the Tagalog, with a population
of 15151489 (1990 NSO) on the island of Cebu alone, numbering about 15,008,593 (18).
Cebuano is spoken in those areas of the Republic of the Philippines Cebuano, Bohol, Negros Oriental, Leyte, Samar,
Negros Occidental, Peleran Island, Masbate Island, Mindanao (19).
Cebuano dialects (20)
Cebuano has many dialects, the most important of which are the following:

Cebu
Boholano
Leyte
Mindanao and Visayan.
Boholano is sometimes considered a separate language (21).
The Cebuano language began to appear in writing during the early eighteenth century under the influence of Spanish
missionaries andas a result of Spanish influence, Cebuano contains many words of Spanish origin (22).
The word Cebuano comes from the origin of the word "Cebu" which is the Spanish version of the original name
"Sugbo", whichmost likely comes from the verb "Sugbo" which means "walking in the water". In the

old days the shores of the port of Cebu were shallow, so travelers coming from the sea had to wade into the water to
reach land (23).
The Cebuanos speak the Cebuano language. The Cebuanos constitute the second largest ethnic group in the Philippines.
They are the Visayan people, and their language, Cebuano is the second common language in the country (24).
IIOKANO Language

16 ) Gonzales, W. D. W. Trilingual code-switching using quantitative lenses: An exploratory study on Hokaglish. Journal of Linguistics, 47,
Philippines, 2016. P.108
17 ) Christopher DeFraga, Cebuano Informational Report, Rhode Island College, TESL 539,USA, Summer 2011. P.3
18 ) Jesus T.Peral T A,libid,p.32.
19 ) Jesus T.Peral T A,libid,p.32.
20 ) Christopher DeFraga, Cebuano Informational Report, ibid, p.3.
21 ) Christopher DeFraga, ibid, P.3.
22 ) Christopher DeFraga, ibid, P.3.
23 ) Gwendalene Ting, Origin of Cebuano, University of the Philippines, Research Gate 2016. 2016. P.2.
24 ) Blust, Robert Andrew. CEBUANO, Encyclopedia Britannica, UK, 2015, P.2.
One of the main languages in the Philippines and is spoken in the northern part of the Philippines, it is the third most
spoken language in the Philippines and is spoken by nearly 8 million people and its dialects are the dialects of Ilokano:
Pangasinan, Cagayan Valley and Hawaii (25).
Hiligaynon Language
Hiligaynon is the fourth largest language in the Philippines, representing nearly 10% of the country’s population with
seven million speakers throughout Negros Occidental southeast of Panay and Guimaras Island and in Urban centers on
the islands of Mindanao (Davao & Zamboanga) and Palawan (Puerto Princesa). It is a major commercial language of
the West Visyan region (26).
Waray-Waray Language
This language is spoken by a large ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, living in the Samar & Easter Leyte &
Biliran Islands. They numbered about 4.2 million in the early 21 st century, and they speak the Visayan (Pisayan)
language and this language is from the Austronesian (Malay-Polynesian) family. Most of the Waray-Waray are farmers
and live in small villages. Although the kinship system and family structure are almost identical to those of other
Filipino Christian groups, Waray-Waray retained more pre-Chistian beliefs and folklore (27).
Kapampangan Language
Also called Pampango. It is an ethnolinguistic group that lives in the Philippines mainly in the Central Luzon plain,
especially in the province of Pampanga, but also in parts of other neighboring provinces. Kapampangans numbered
about two million people in the early twenty-first century. The Kapampangan language is closely related to others in the
central Philippines, all belonging to the Austronesian language family (Malayo-Polynesian) (28).
Northern Bicol Language
Northern Bicol language has been one of the interests for several decades. The language has been erased in the mid-
eighties, and speakers reportedly found themselves to be mostly bilingual in either Tagalog or Southern Catanduanis
Bicol which is the most widely spoken language in the region (29).

Chavacano Language
The majority of the Filipino population is descended from the Malay people, although there have been many cultural
and ethnic influences in the Philippines throughout history. Chavacano speakers belong to one of the distinct ethnic and
linguistics groups in the Philippines, which includes at least a hundred different ethnicities. Some groups speak
Chavacano in parts of Malaysia (30).
More than one million Creole Chavacano speakers live in the Philippines, and the largest population resides in
Zamboanga City and surrounding areas, but today, it is recognized as an official language ( 31).

25 ) Shirley N. Dita, Information Structure in Ilocano, De La Salle University, The third international workshop on Information structure of
Austronesian Languages, Manila. 2016.p 3.
26 ) R.David Paul Zorc, Hiligaynon, Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, USA, 2006 P.1.
27 ) Blust, Robert Andrew. Waray-Waray, Encyclopedia Britannica, UK. 2015, P.4.
28 ) Blust, Robert Andrew. Ibid, P.2.
29 ) Gumba, Leslie, Background Research Report on Northern Catanduanes Bicolano, Journal

of Language Survey Reports,Dallas, USA, 2015. P1.

30 ) Steven Collins, cultural orientation, chavacano,dliflc United States, 2019. P. 6.
31 ) Steven Collins, ibid, 2019. P. 7.