As an Indonesian, it's quite interesting to see the topic of the Filipino language being discussed among Filipinos. Generally, it seems that there is a little discontent among non-Tagalog speakers regarding the status of "Filipino" as the country's national language, for example from this post. It's interesting because despite the fact that Filipino-Tagalog has been declared to be the national language, form time to time there are people not from Luzon who admit to not speaking the language fluently and have to resort to English.
As someone who is passionate about history, politics and linguistics, I will try to analyse the situation, give my point of view as an outsider, and then perhaps offer some examples of what other countries have done for comparison. I hope that this can start a civilised and well-mannered debate here.
A "National Language" for the Philippines
This is a map of the languages spoken in the Philippines.
Article XIII, section 3 of the 1935 constitution establishing the Commonwealth of the Philippines provided that:
>The National Assembly shall take steps toward the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages. Until otherwise provided by law, English and Spanish shall continue as official languages.
On 1937, the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (SWP) was established in order to determine what the National Language for an independent Philippine Republic. After some thought and deliberation from the members of the SWP, they ultimately decided to base the National Language off from Tagalog. In no particular order, the reasoning was as follows:
- Tagalog is the language of the capital.
- Tagalog was more standardized than the other languages.
- Tagalog had the largest number of speakers (at that time).
- Most of the written literature of country at that time was already written in Tagalog.
- Tagalog had already evolved to have complex and rich terminologies that could better express ones thoughts.
- Etc. among others
Right from the start, it is obvious that this line of reasoning would lead to several problems. The biggest problem is that this obviously gives an unfair advantage to people who already speak Tagalog as their native lang
... keep reading on reddit ➡We have a research about the multiple dying languages in the Philippines. And we're hoping if you know some. We found a beautiful tribe in Bohol called Eskaya and we're wanting to learn more about it. I hope a kind heart would reply and help us out. Please also suggest what languages are currently endangered and the languages that are no longer spoken. Our research wants to know the reasons behind as to why these languages are no longer spoken and we would like to preserve the beautiful languages in our country because we would like to preserve the culture of our country. Thank you.
I wanted to know your guys opinion on if there is a language barrier issue in the Philippines between Filipinos because of how many languages are spoken? I am not claiming there is but I wanted to know opinions on if this was an issue or if Tagalog/English is wide spread enough that its not a problem. I am including people who do not live in major cities.
The Philippines has been a Spanish colony for around 400 years. Although traces of Spanish language are present in the current Tagalog vocabulary, how is it that it developed it's own langauge comparing to Mexico and other previous Spansih Colonies?
https://www.imgur.com/yyIj8EK
Here is an image of Kobe and Gianna being painted in a basketball court in a place called Tenement in Manila, Philippines, as a memorial to both.
Edit:
FINISHED PRODUCT: https://imgur.com/ZxqwUTc
Edit: Please do check the (newly-made) r/Coronavirus_PH subreddit for COVID-19 related issues in the Philippines. Thank you.
Case 1
- status: RECOVERED
- who: 38 year-old female, Chinese
- tested positive: January (reported on January 30)
- symptoms: mild cough (January 21)
- other conditions: none
- travel history: Wuhan -> Hong Kong -> Cebu -> Dumaguete -> Manila
- currently at: China
- known links (to other cases): companion of Case 2
Case 2
- status: DEAD (February 1)
- who: 44 year-old male, Chinese
- tested positive: late January (reported on February 2)
- symptoms: pneumonia, fever, cough, sore throat (January 25)
- other conditions: bacterial infection (Streptococcus pneumoniae and Influenza type B)
- travel history: Wuhan -> Hong Kong -> Cebu -> Dumaguete -> Manila
- currently at: N/A
- known links (to other cases): companion of Case 1
Case 3
- status: RECOVERED
- who: 60 year-old female, Chinese
- tested positive: January 23 (reported on February 5)
- symptoms: fever and coryza (January 22)
- other conditions: none
- travel history: Wuhan -> Hong Kong -> Cebu -> Bohol (January 20)
- currently at: China
- known links (to other cases): none
Case 4
- status: ADMITTED (STABLE)
- who: 48 year-old male, Filipino
- tested positive: March 5
- symptoms: chills and fever (March 3)
- other conditions: none
- travel history: Japan -> Manila (February 25)
- currently at: Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM)
- known links (to other cases): none
Case 5
- status: ADMITTED (SERIOUS)
- who: 62 year-old male, Filipino
- tested positive: March 5
- symptoms: cough (February 25), severe pneumonia (March 1)
- other conditions: hypertension; diabetes mellitus
- travel history: none
- currently at: RITM
- known links (to the other cases): none
All information came from the press releases of the Department of Health. Just summarized them for easy reading.
Ingat po tayong lahat mga kababayan. Possible local transmissions can occur.
Sources:
Case 1 - https://www.doh.gov.ph/doh-press-release/doh-confirms-first-2019-nCoV-case-in-the-country
Case 2 - [https://www.doh.gov.ph/press-release/DOH-reveals-more-negative-2019-nCoV-cases-confirms-first-nCoV-ARD-death-in-PH](https://www.do
... keep reading on reddit ➡In Tagalog, we have phrases like pusong bato (cold) and balat-sibuyas (sensitive), among single-word metaphors like ahas (sneaky?) and baboy (matakaw).
While I'm interested in the equivalents of Tagalog metaphors in other Philippine languages, I was also wondering if there were metaphorical expressions in other Philippine languages that didn't exist in Tagalog [exclusive to that language?], or had a similar meaning to a rough equivalent in Tagalog, but with different literal meaning.
But I couldn't Finnish a sentence.
