Languages in the

Philippines
  There are more than 50 million speakers of Tagalog in the
Philippines, mostly in the southern parts of Luzon, the
A History of archipelago’s largest island. Other dialects spoken in the
Philippines include Cebuano, Ilokano, Waray-Waray, Hiligaynon,
the Language Pangasinan, Bikol, Maranao, Maguindanao, Tausug, and
Kapampangan, but the official language, Filipino, is based on
of the Tagalog.
Philippines  There are also significant numbers of Tagalog-speaking
communities in other countries, with the largest in the United
States where it ranks as the sixth most-spoken language.
A History of  Derived from “Taga-ilog,” which literally means “from the river,”
Tagalog is an Austronesian language belonging to the Malayo-
the Language Polynesian subfamily, with outside influences from Malay and
Chinese, and later from both Spanish and American English
of the through four centuries of colonial rule. This influence is seen in
Philippines Tagalog words and their spelling.
A History of  Tagalog had its own writing system based on an ancient script
the Language called the Baybayin that uses a syllabic alphabet, which the
Spanish colonialists romanized. Even the modern alphabet has
of the been changed several times to incorporate foreign sounds from
both Spanish and English.
Philippines
  There are thousands of loan words in Tagalog, particularly from
Spanish, and the use of “Taglish,” the mixing of Tagalog and
A History of English, is common, especially in urban areas. In both spoken and
written Tagalog, English words (sometimes spelled according to
the Language their Tagalog pronunciation, oftentimes not) are used alongside
words of Spanish origin. Some of these borrowed words do have
of the equivalent forms in Tagalog but their use is reserved for formal or
literary language. But many of these loan words do not have
Philippines Tagalog counterparts, especially those that refer to objects or
concepts that did not exist in the country prior to the arrival of
Westerners.
  However, in spite of all the foreign borrowings in Tagalog, the
A History of richness of the language remains intact. Foreign words are not
absorbed into the language without being subjected to the
the Language complexity of Tagalog’s system of affixes—or syllables or letters
fixed within a word—which permits any noun to be turned into a
of the verb and vice versa. If language is the collective product of the
Philippines genius of a people, as linguist Wilhelm Humboldt put it, affixation
is the genius of Tagalog and its challenge as well.
Major
Languages in
the Philippines
  The Philippines has 8 major dialects. Listed in the figure from top
to bottom: Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), Ilocano,
Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, and Waray. The language
being taught all over the Philippines is Tagalog and English.
 The Cebuano dialect originated in Cebu, which is in the Visayas.
However, it spread to neighboring islands and in the northern and
Major eastern parts of Mindanao. This was probably facilitated by the
Languages in American and Spanish policies to christianize Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the Tagalog and Bikol dialect (Bikolandia) boundaries
the Philippines seem to remain predominantly they were centuries ago. This map
only shows the dialect majority in each region. Actually,
southeastern Mindanao is populated with Ilocano, Tagalog, and
other dialects, but Cebuano has become the dominant dialect in
that area.. The Ilocano dialect has spread out from its origin in the
western coast (Ilocandia), which was also probably facilitated by
Spanish and American policies.
  The term “Philippine language” has been used ambiguously in
literature. It is used to refer either to “any language native to the
Classification Philippines, without regard to its genetic affiliation” or to “any
member of a putative subgroup of Austronesian languages
of Philippine located in the Philippine Islands” (Blust, 1991). In this article, the
languages term “Philippine language” (PL) is used to refer to the genetic
sense and “languages in the Philippines” is used to denote purely
geographical or political reference.
  Philippine languages belong to the Western Malayo-Polynesian
Classification branch of the Austronesian language family. The Austronesian
language family, the largest existing language family in terms of
of Philippine the number of its member languages, spreads from Malagasy (in
Madagascar) to the Rapanui (in Easter Island), and from Formosan
languages languages (in Taiwan) to Maori (in New Zealand) (Adelaar &
Himmelman, 2005).
  Philippine languages can be further classified into microgroups as
can be seen in the following table.

Classification
of Philippine
languages
  Most speakers and users of Philippine languages, including the
national mass media, have little, if not none, idea regarding the
status of their own native language. They often refer to them as
“dialects”, with only English and Filipino having the official status
of “languages” in their minds.
Language  There are two kinds of criteria that are used to distinguish
versus dialect languages from dialects: social and political; and linguistic. The
first typically view “languages” as prestigious, official and written,
while “dialects” are mostly spoken, unofficial, and associated with
groups lacking in prestige (Chambers & Trudgill, 2004).
  Linguists, however, use different criteria. If speakers of the two
speech varieties can have a conversation and understand each
other, they are using “dialects” of a single language. In contrast, if
speakers of the two speech varieties converse and do not
understand each other, they are using two distinct languages. This
Language criterion is called mutual intelligibility. In this criterion, Cebuano,
Ilocano, Masbatenyo, Waray, among others, are languages and
versus dialect not merely dialects. On the other hand, the Tagalog varieties
spoken in Batangas, Rizal, and other southern Tagalog areas are
dialects of the Tagalog language.
Language
versus dialect
  Dialectal variation varies from language to language. Tagalog and
Kapampangan have very moderate dialectal variation. Dialects of
Bikol, however, exhibit great dialectal variation. Bikol is an
example of a macrolanguage: a set of related languages/dialects
that must be very closely related and that there must be some
Language domain in which a single language identity is recognized. It
consists of the following dialects: Central Bikol, Northern
versus dialect Catanduanes Bikol, Southern Catanduanes Bikol, Rinconada Bikol,
West Albay Bikol, Libon, Miraya, Buhi’non. Bisayan languages (e.g
Masbatenyo, Hiligaynon, Waray, Cebuano), on the other hand,
exhibit a high rate of mutual intelligibility.
  Another measure for distinguishing a language from a dialect is
grammar. If the speech variety has different grammar, then it is a
different language.
 Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, can be
considered the Tagalog variety spoken in Metro Manila, sharing
Language identical grammar with other Tagalog varieties (Nolasco, 2007).
 There are 187 distinct living languages in the Philippines, including
versus dialect the Filipino Sign Language (FSL), according to the latest edition of
Ethnologue (2015). Of these, 183 are living and 4 are extinct. Of
the living languages, 41 are institutional, 73 are developing, 45 are
vigorous, 13 are in trouble, and 11 are dying.
  https://www.livinglanguage.com/blog/2014/11/25/tagalog-a-
history-of-the-language-philippines/#:~:text=Derived%20from
%20%E2%80%9CTaga%2Dilog%2C,four%20centuries%20of
%20colonial%20rule.
Reference  https://blog.senti.com.ph/the-philippine-linguistic-situation-
18a69f14a1b7