Filipino vs. Tagalog

Encyclopedia : F : FI : FIL : Filipino vs. Tagalog

Filipino and Tagalog are language names that may refer to the same language, or perhaps they refer to different language variants or even different (but related) languages. There is a continuing controversy whether the distinction is significant, and this article clarifies some of the complex language situation in the Philippines, and the related sociopolitical and linguistic issues that continue to fuel the controversy.

Filipino is the national language of the Philippines, spoken natively by at least 30% of the 84 Million population, and as a second language by probably more that 80% of the population.^{([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [Tagalog is widely identified to be the native language of the Tagalog ethnic group. The number of native speakers of Tagalog is arguably fewer than the first language speakers of Filipino, because non-Tagalog residents in cities like Cotabato City, which are some distance away from the Tagalog regions of central and southern Luzon, may have Filipino as their first language, but be reluctant to call themselves native speakers of Tagalog if only because they are (ethnically) not native Tagalogs.([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [Filipino can also be called a second-language speaker of Tagalog. The difference is perhaps more significant in the norms of writing and speech than in the number of persons identifiable as speakers of one language variant or the other. Filipino is an official language of education, but less important than English. It is the major language of the broadcast media and cinema, but less important than English as a language of publication (except in some domains, like comic books) and less important for academic-scientific-technology discourse. English and Filipino compete in the domains of business and government.([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [lingua franca in all regions of the Philippines, 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 is only slight orthographic and vocabulary variation between the language varieties called Filipino and Tagalog. Tagalog, and its orthographic/literary tradition, date back hundreds of years and are centered on the Tagalog ethnic group of central and southern Luzon island. Filipino is a slightly divergent tradition that can only be traced back to the 1930's (as Pilipino, which was at the time considered to be pretty much identical with Tagalog). The current (more divergent from Tagalog) approach to orthography and vocabulary development only emerged in the 1970's, and became official with the 1987 constitution. Orthographically, Filipino has 28 letters (including "ng" which is considered one letter, and the Spanish-derived ñ) and is has a more open phonetic system and vocabulary, especially in relation to foreign and local (non-Tagalog) loanwords and neologisms. Tagalog has a 20 letter vocabulary (no letters c, f, j, q, v, x, z; but using "ng" as a single letter) and the phonetic system and vocabulary tend to be more traditional and "closed" although no language, except perhaps Vatican Latin, is really closed to evolution.([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [diasystem (something like Norwegian Nynorsk and Bokmål, but probably with less significant divergence, with considerably less institutional support and cultural importance/recognition of the differences), a single generic language or macrolanguage or L-complex where Filipino and Tagalog are two poles in a spectrum of dialectal and orthographic variation. The spectrum from Filipino to Tagalog is not the only dimension of variation (there are many regional dialects within the Tagalog-speaking region and sociolinguistic variations), but it is arguably the most important dimension for orthography, standardization and intellectualization of language.}

(Note that in Philippine English usage, regional languages (or what linguists, both Filipino and international, and most foreigners would call a distinct regional language) are usually referred to as dialects, even though there is a clear recognition of different regional ethnic groups known to have mutually unintelligible forms of speech. For most of the world, two speech varieties of speech are different languages if they are mutually unintelligible; but in the Philippines they are often called dialects even though their relationship is known to be so distant as to be mutually unintelligible.)^{([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [sociolinguistic phenomenon behind the term Tagalog. In fact, the name Tagalog may be more common for the Filipino-Tagalog diasystem than the name Filipino, even after several decades of the school subject being called Filipino. Most speakers of Filipino-Tagalog are oblivious of the distinction, and are happy to call the language either Filipino or Tagalog. However, because on the connotation and construal of the names, the controversy is not likely to go away any time soon.}

Some language policy researchers (notably certain linguists at the University of the Philippines in Diliman) assert that Filipino is a lingua franca, the living speech variety used between ethnic groups in all regions of the country, and its still-emerging orthographic counterpart. From this point of view, Tagalog is not the term for that lingua franca, it is the term that denotes the ethnic language spoken in a certain region of Luzon and some neighboring islands. But arguably, any second language speakers of "Tagalog" are in fact using Tagalog as a lingua franca. However, the term Tagalog is a non-neutral term for that sociolinguistic phenomenon, and the term Filipino is a more neutral (and thus, allegedly, more scientifically legitimate) way of referring to the language situation.

Advocates of the lingua franca perspective are also unwilling to say that Filipino is "based on" Tagalog, because they claim the lingua franca is a legitimate speech variety in its own right, the official norm (on their reading of the 1987 constitution, and the supporting debates) for the national language is not any particular ethnic language, but the lingua franca already in active use in every region of the Philippines. The lingua franca perspective would presumably tend to define a wider range of speakers as first language speakers of Filipino rather than second language speakers of Tagalog. The children of interethnic marriages in many parts of the country, even where both parents are non-Tagalogs, may be more fluent in Filipino than any other Philippine language or English, and yet they may reside far from the ethnic region of the Tagalogs.

Many commentators on the issue of Filipino and Tagalog, often non-Tagalogs who would prefer that only their regional language and English would occupy the social space currently occupied by Filipino-Tagalog, will claim Filipino is a planned future language that has not yet come into existence. There is also an implication that it never will, and that the whole enterprise is illegitimate. From this perspective, Filipino is supposed to be a merger of many different languages, and since what is currently referred to as Filipino has very little content from regional languages (the dynamism of Filipino comes more from English loanwords and Manileño slang and neologism), it is actually Tagalog and there is no such thing as Filipino. The lingua franca perspective would counter that existing lingua franca is easily observed as a legitimate and vibrant language, and that in the various regional dialectal variations of Filipino there is already a significant number of loanwords from regional languages. Admittedly these regional dialectal usages are seldom popularized nationally, especially in comparison to the flood of loanwords from English, but the spoken language basis for such a process of popularization and dissemination is in place. The lingua franca proponents envision a process of popularizing regional dialectal usage derived from regional languages, as the foundation of standardizing and intellectualizing a language, based on a lingua franca not based on Tagalog, that is already dominant nationally in spoken discourse (especially in the broadcast media). That language, the lingua franca they call Filipino, only needs to assert itself more (against the colonial legacy of English) in the realm of writing. Advocates of English (including many regional language advocates) would say that the importance of English is not primarily a matter of an outdated colonial legacy, but that English is the wave of the future, with science, world trade and the Internet become more important every decade.

The lingua franca advocates may respond that the growing influence of English may be true and unstoppable, but that English is an exogenous language that is difficult for the mass of Filipinos to acquire fluently, while tens of millions are acquiring the lingua franca and using it extensively on a daily basis. English will remain a second language, like it is in countries like Finland or the Netherlands, while the endogenous lingua franca of Filipino will come to play a more important role in both speech and writing. National census results show that there are very few native speakers of English in the Philippines, a few percent from a small stratum of wealthy and highly educated families, and it is not increasing very rapidly. On the other hand, Filipino continues to grow vigorously, both as a lingua franca and second language, but also in the number of first language speakers. The growth in first language speakers is in part because of the rapid growth of population metropolitan Manila, mainly through the influx of non-Tagalogs, whose children become first-language speakers of Filipino/Tagalog; but it is also because there is a shift in lingua franca to Filipino even in parts of the country that are non-Tagalog. Cotabato City is populated by a mixture of Ilonggos, Ilocanos, Chavacanos, Maguindanaos, Tagalogs and Cebuanos, with no ethnic group dominating. In the past, people might have turned to Cebuano as a lingua franca, because Cebuano remains the most important lingua franca in most of Mindanao. Yet in fact, Cotabato City has standardized on Filipino as its lingua franca, although it is not an ethnically Tagalog city. Children growing up in Cotabato City are best considered native speakers of Filipino, not Tagalog. A similar situation is true in Baguio City, where Ilocano used to be the lingua franca among the ethnic Pangasinan, Ilocano, assorted Igorot and Tagalog residents, the language of the public school playground is now Filipino.

So educated opinion in the Philippines about the status and relationship of Filipino and Tagalog remains divided, and the controversies do not seem to be subsiding or disappearing. The disagreements are not simply about matters of fact, although there are plenty of interesting facts involved; it is also about incompatible conceptual frameworks, with socio-political and linguistic-theory nuances, that are used to understand and name those factual situations. There are competing perspectives that seem logical within their own assumptions; perhaps only history will tell which account of Tagalog and Filipino is a better characterization of the current situation and dynamic.