Official historical markerAlternate logo used on official social media pages
The Commission on the Filipino Language (CFL),[2] also referred to as the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF),[lower-alpha 1] is the official regulating body of the Filipino language and the official government institution tasked with developing, preserving, and promoting the various local Philippine languages.[4][5] The commission was established in accordance with the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines.
Established by Republic Act No. 7104 in 1991,[2] the commission is a replacement for the Institute of Philippine Languages (IPL; Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas) that was set up in 1987 which was a replacement of the older Institute of National Language (INL; Surian ng Wikang Pambansa), established in 1937 as the first government agency to foster the development of a Philippine national language.[6]
History
The 1st National Assembly of the Philippines passed Commonwealth Act No. 184 of 1936, establishing the Institute of National Language (Surian ng Wikang Pambansa).[1] On January 12, 1937, President Manuel L. Quezon appointed the members to compose the INL. By virtue of Executive Order No. 134 issued and signed by President Quezon on December 30, 1937, approved the adoption of Tagalog as the basis of the national language, and declared and proclaimed the national language based on Tagalog, as the national language of the Philippines.[7] Quezon himself was born & raised in Baler, Aurora, which is a native Tagalog-speaking area. In 1938, the INL was dissolved and replaced with the National Language Institute. Its purpose was to prepare for the nationwide teaching of the Tagalog-based national language (Wikang Pambansa na batay/base sa Tagalog) by creating a dictionary and a grammar book with a standardized orthography. In the school year of 1940–1941, the teaching of the national language (wikang pambansa), with its new standardized orthography, was set by law in the fourth year of all high schools in both public and private schools throughout the country.[8] The Tagalog-based national language was taught in school only as one of the subject areas in 1940, but was not adapted as the medium of instruction.
During World War II, the Japanese occupiers encouraged the use of the national language rather than English in schools. The Tagalog-based national language was, therefore, propagated not only in education but also in mass media and in official communication. The census for 1948 reported that 7,126,913 people or 37.11% of the population spoke the language, representing an increase of 11.7% from the 1939 figure of 4,068,565. Of these seven million people, 47.7% learnt it as a second language.[9]
The current commission was established by Republic Act No. 7104 of 1991,[2] replacing the Institute of Philippine Languages (IPL) that was previously set up in January 1987 (Executive Order No. 117);[10] itself, a replacement of the older Institute of National Language (INL), established in 1937.[6]
In October 2018, the KWF announced in its newsletter Diyaryo Filipino (Filipino Newspaper) its bringing online a National Dictionary in compliance with the commission's Ortograpiyang Pambansa (National Orthography) of 2013.[11][12] According to the same October 2018 newsletter, also in the works (in experimental and pilot-testing stage) is an official spellcheck in accordance with the Ortograpiyang Pambansa (National Orthography) and the Manwal sa Masinop na Pagsulat (Manual to Provident/Neat/Careful Writing).[13]
Abe Sakili (Mga Wika sa Muslim Mindanao/ Languages of Muslim Mindanao)
Benjamin Mendillo Jr. (OIC-Director General of the Commission)
Language diversity
The Philippines is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. With 175 distinct native languages (sometimes incorrectly termed dialects), it has about 3% of the world's languages, yet only 0.2% of Earth's land area, making the Philippines 15 times more diverse than average in terms of language diversity.[14]
Ethnologue, a compendium of world languages, notes that 28 Philippine languages are in trouble, up from 13 in 2016. Eleven languages are dying, and several are already extinct. The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages has identified the Philippines as being one of the top 10 "language hotspots" of the world, which means that the Philippines has a wealth of languages but such languages are being lost at a rate faster than those languages can be documented properly.[14]
Ethnologue's estimates are conservative, as many linguists have noted that many endangered languages in the Philippines. All 32 Negrito languages of the Philippines are endangered (Headland, 2003), and the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino has identified approximately 50 endangered languages.[14]
Endangered Filipino Languages List
A 2015 study by the Commission updated the list of endangered languages in the Philippines. The Commission noted that there are 37 languages in the country that are now endangered, mostly Aeta languages in Luzon and Visayas, notably Negros Occidental. The Kinarol-an language Barangay Carol-an, Kabankalan, Negros Occidental was considered as extinct as it was no longer being used in casual conversations. The study also noted that the Inagtâ Isaróg language of Goa, Ocampo and Tigaon in Camarines Sur had only one remaining speaker in 2015.[15]
The Árta language of Nagtipunan, Quirino is considered nearly extinct as only 11 persons are speaking the language. Languages that are moribund (near extinction) include: the Inatá language of Cadiz City, Negros Occidental; Álta language of Aurora, Nueva Ecija; and Ayta Magbukun language of Abucay, Bataan. The Ayta Magbukun has at least 114 practicing families, while the others range from only 29 to 113 persons.[15]
Meanwhile, the threatened languages with more than a thousand speakers remaining are Álta Kabulowán of Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija; Ayta Mag-Indí of Pampanga and Zambales; and Gubatnón Mangyán of Magsaysay, Occidental Mindoro.[15]
Those that have lessening usage include Inagta Irayá of Buhi, Camarines Sur; Binaták of Palawan; Manidé of Camarines Norte; Ayta Kadí of Quezon Province; Ayta Ambalá of Zambales and Bataan; Ayta Mag-antsi of Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, and Zambales; Ténap (Agta Dupaningan) of Cagayan and Isabela; Bolinaw of Pangasinan; Agta Dumagat Casiguran of Isabela and Aurora; and Agtâ Dumagat Umíray of Aurora and Quezon Province.[15]
Part also of the list are languages which the KWF consider as under threat and needing further studies. These are Manobo Kalamansíg of Sultan Kudarat; Ratagnón Mangyán of Occidental Mindoro; Îguwák of Nueva Vizcaya; Karáw of Benguet; Tagabulos of Aurora, Bulacan, and Quezon Province; Bangon Mangyán of Oriental Mindoro; Manobo Ilyanen of Cotabato; Gâdang of Mountain Province; Kalamyanën of Palawan; Tadyawan Mangyán of Oriental Mindoro; Finallíg of Barlig, Mountain Province; Menuvú of Bukidnon; Tawbuwíd Mangyán of Occidental and Oriental Mindoro; Manóbo Arománën of Cotabato; Manóbo Tigwahánon of Bukidnon; and Abéllen of Tarlac. Also listed under threat is the Irungdungan (Agta Isirigan) of Cagayan but the KWF observes a rising number of speakers.[15]
The Commission, with the much-needed cooperation and initiated of provincial and local governments, embarked on a landmark project on language revitalization in Abucay, Bataan in 2018, helping the Ayta Magbukun communities in the town's village of Bangkal through Bahay Wika where young members of the ethnic group are being taught of their language by two elders.[15]
Criticism
One major criticism of the commission is that it supposedly fails in its goal of further developing the Filipino language.[16] This is grounded in the fact that Filipino is essentially Tagalog, a fact acknowledged by former Commissioner, Ricardo María Durán Nolasco, and with an impoverished technical and scientific vocabulary, at that, which relies heavily on foreign borrowings and, often, constructions. It is often left to the universities to develop their own respective terminologies for each field, leading to a lack of uniformity and general public disuse.
It is argued that current state of the Filipino language is contrary to the intention of Republic Act (RA) No. 7104 that requires that the national language be developed and enriched by the lexicon of the country's other languages.[17]
Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority. Its standardized form, officially named Filipino, is the national language of the Philippines, and is one of two official languages, alongside English.
Filipino is a language under the Austronesian language family. It is the national language of the Philippines, lingua franca, and one of the two official languages of the country, with English. It is a standardized variety of the native language Tagalog, spoken and written in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region, and in other urban centers of the archipelago. The 1987 Constitution mandates that Filipino be further enriched and developed by the other languages of the Philippines.
Filipinoorthography specifies the correct use of the writing system of the Filipino language, the national and co-official language of the Philippines.
There are some 130 to 195 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 along with some local varieties of Chinese 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 Commission on the Filipino Language and serves as a lingua franca used by Filipinos of various ethnolinguistic backgrounds.
The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw and the Molbog language—and form a subfamily of Austronesian languages. Although the Philippines is near the center of Austronesian expansion from Taiwan, there is little linguistic diversity among the approximately 150 Philippine languages, suggesting that earlier diversity has been erased by the spread of the ancestor of the modern Philippine languages.
The Abakada alphabet was an "indigenized" Latin alphabet adopted for the Tagalog-based Wikang Pambansa in 1939.
The modern Filipino alphabet, otherwise known as the Filipino alphabet, is the alphabet of the Filipino language, the official national language and one of the two official languages of the Philippines. The modern Filipino alphabet is made up of 28 letters, which includes the entire 26-letter set of the ISO basic Latin alphabet, the Spanish Ñ, and the Ng. The Ng digraph came from the Pilipino Abakada alphabet of the Fourth Republic. Today, the modern Filipino alphabet may also be used to write all autochthonous languages of the Philippines and Chavacano, a Spanish-derived creole.
The Philippines is inhabited by more than 182 ethnolinguistic groups, many of which are classified as "Indigenous Peoples" under the country's Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997. Traditionally-Muslim peoples from the southernmost island group of Mindanao are usually categorized together as Moro peoples, whether they are classified as Indigenous peoples or not. About 142 are classified as non-Muslim Indigenous people groups, and about 19 ethnolinguistic groups are classified as neither Indigenous nor Moro. Various migrant groups have also had a significant presence throughout the country's history.
Lope K. Santos was a Filipino Tagalog-language writer and former senator of the Philippines. He is best known for his 1906 socialist novel, Banaag at Sikat and for his contributions to the development of Filipino grammar and Tagalog orthography.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Philippines:
The indigenous peoples of the Philippines are ethnolinguistic groups or subgroups that maintain partial isolation or independence throughout the colonial era, and have retained much of their traditional pre-colonial culture and practices.
Jose Villa Panganiban was a Filipino lexicographer, writer, professor, linguist, polyglot, poet, journalist, radio personality, and translator. He was the director of the Institute of National Language. One of the first promoters and developers of the Philippine national language, he was best known for his work Diksyunaryo–Tesauro Ingles–Pilipino.
The Negrito peoples of the Philippines speak various Philippine languages. They have more in common with neighboring languages than with each other, and are listed here merely as an aid to identification.
Michael M. Coroza is a Filipino poet, educator, and S.E.A. Write Award laureate.
David Michael M. San Juan is a Filipino Marxist writer, activist, and professor. He was awarded the title of Mananaysay ng Taon in 2009 and Makata ng Taon in 2010 by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino.
The Sentro ng Wikang Filipino, also known the Sentro, is a language academy, research center, and university-based publishing house that is part of the University of the Philippines System (UP). It has offices in various autonomous universities of UP System, the most notable of which is the one housed at the University of the Philippines Diliman that won the Philippine National Book Award for Publisher of the Year by the Manila Critics' Circle. The Sentro is active not just within the UP system due to its mission of "developing and disseminating" the Filipino language according to the provisions of the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
Carlos Mapili Padilla was a Filipino politician who served as the Governor of Nueva Vizcaya from 2016 until his death in 2023. Padilla was elected to his first term as Governor in 2016 and was re-elected in 2019 and 2022.
Carmelita Yboa Carnacite-Abdurahman is a Filipino academic in the field of linguistics.
Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa, simply known as Buwan ng Wika and formerly and still referred to as Linggo ng Wika, is a month-long annual observance in the Philippines held every August to promote the national language, Filipino. The Commission on the Filipino Language is the lead agency in charge of organizing events in relation to the observances.
Siyokoy is a term coined by Virgilio Almario that refers to Filipino-language hybrid words seemingly derived from both English and Spanish. The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino under the administration of Almario has considered siyokoy words to be improper and therefore its use discouraged.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
