The Great Filipino vs Tagalog Debate

August is known as the language month in the Philippines. This is the perfect time to talk about why we should not only celebrate wikang Filipino, but all 187 languages in the country, including my mother tongue Central Bicol. I aim to answer one of the most intriguing questions about our language. Is there a difference between Filipino and Tagalog? Is Filipino a separate language?

Before we break down Filipino vs Tagalog, let me ask this significant question to better understand of what makes one language distinct–

Are there any differences between a language and a dialect?

There seems to be a big misconception on how we define language in our own terms. Many people use the words dialect and language synonymously. But in fact, they are not.

Typically, two languages cannot understand each other, but two dialects may. Dialect is that speech variety of the language with no significant differences other than a variety in vocabulary, pronunciations, or intonations.

The best example of a language is Tagalog. It has its own dialects including Tagalog-Batangas, Tagalog-Tayabas, Tagalog-Bulacan, etc. They can still understand each other because the differences are very minimal.

Example: Tagalog-Manila: umuulan; Tagalog-Batangas: naulan

My native language Central Bikol also have ample of dialects– Canaman, Naga, Partido, and Tabaco-Legazpi-Sorsogon (TSL). The word “bakit” have varieties in these dialects.

Example: Naga: tâno; Partido: hadáw; TSL: natà

You can easily test language vs dialect by using the mutual intelligibility test. It means that if you ask two native speakers to communicate with each other using their native languages unfamiliar to both of them, and they failed to understand each other, then they are separate languages of their own.

But if they did, then they are most likely a dialect or just the same language.

Example: English has dialects including American English, British English, Australian English. They are perfectly comprehensible to each other’s speakers. They have some differences in vocabularies, intonations, and pronunciations, but they are the same language. However, a Chinese speaker cannot understand a Spanish speaker. They are completely incomprehensible thus they are separate languages of their own.

Philippines is home to more than 180+ languages. The fact that I cannot understand a Kapampangan or Cebuano, or Chavacano speaker proves that each of them are languages of their own, having their own grammatical rules, and not a dialect.

So, is Filipino a separate language?

Simply by virtue of Executive Order №134 issued on December 30, 1937, Filipino was proclaimed as the national language of the Philippines, electing Tagalog as its basis (more of this in the Commonwealth Era). Filipino should be a separate language, as our constitution mandated the national language institute in the ‘30s to construct a language based on Tagalog with the help of other regional languages in the Philippines. So legally and politically speaking, Filipino is a language.

But linguistically speaking, using the mutual intelligibility test, no. Filipino is not a language. It is a mere variety (a more standard form) of Tagalog-Manila.

It is thought to evolve through time with continuous linguistic studies but until today, people are still asking why we can’t translate Filipino to Tagalog, or vice versa. Because they are the same!

Other obvious ways to tell if Filipino were a language or a dialect?

Ask yourself if you find a Filipino speaker and a Tagalog speaker incomprehensible. Do they experience language barriers? Can you translate Filipino to Tagalog? Is there a Filipino-Tagalog dictionary or translator? Masasabi mo ba kung Tagalog ang pangungusap na ito o Filipino?

So what is Filipino and what is not Filipino?

Filipino is not a general or an umbrella term for all languages in the Philippines. If this is true, then why are students being fined in classrooms for speaking their native languages in their Filipino class despite MTB-MLE? Why is it that singing Lupang Hinirang in Cebuano is being penalized? (Yang, 2019).

Filipino is not a language. It’s a dialect, a standard variety of Tagalog (Nolasco, 2007).

Despite these notions, I believe there are still differences between the Filipino and Tagalog, especially when it comes to vocabulary and phonology. But grammar, not much. Filipino has become the standard form of the Metro Manila Tagalog dialect and is continually being regulated by Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. However, the Tagalog language itself is not being regulated by any agencies, which makes it hard for us to distinguish the difference between the two today.

Mutual intelligibility test is imperfect, I should say. It can easily become unreliable for comparing languages politically-defined, but it can help you understand those that are linguistically-defined. In fact, this is also what happened to Luxembourgish and German. Luxembourgish is a standard variety of German, however since Luxembourg became a country of its own and would opt to have a common identity for its people, Luxembourgish became a language politically, as a way to distinguish themselves from German.

Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are also examples of language varieties but are politically defined as languages to establish an identity of their own. This also happened in Hindi and Urdu that are politically different but linguistically the same.

These languages are mutually intelligible, but they became separate languages of their own because of their government outlaying a huge effort to standardize and establish a different path for the development of their languages. This is something that KWF has never done, judging by the limited presence of regional languages in Filipino and transformed barely anything from Tagalog grammar, its basis.

If I am not mistaken, KWF has published Tagalog Orthography distinct from Filipino which consists of ABKDEGHLMNNGPRSTUWY alphabet compared to the Filipino ABCDEFGHIJKLMNÑNgOPQRSTUVWXYZ, but we know for sure that orthography is not among language requirements, and it still is under dialect. We know this because of the additional /ə/ vowel and the consonant /ɣ/ that exists in some dialects of Southern Bicol, which are not considered languages of their own but dialects (Lobel, 2009). So orthography and alphabet is insufficient.

The other yardstick for distinguishing a language from a dialect is: different grammar, different language. Filipino, Pilipino and Tagalog share identical grammar. They have the same determiners (ang, ng and sa); the same personal pronouns (siya, ako, niya, kanila, etc.); the same demonstrative pronouns (ito, iyan, doon, etc.); the same linkers (na, at and ay); the same particles (na and pa); and the same verbal affixes -in, -an, i- and -um-. In short, same grammar, same language. (Nolasco, 2007).

There are, however, studies which show that some non-Tagalog speakers having strong native language competencies deviate from grammatical properties of Filipino and I might explore this to know why it did not significantly make its way to Filipino orthography and phonology.

A big disclaimer; I’m not an imperialist, nor a conspiracist. This has been going around linguistic issues and Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino recognized this during the time of Sir Ricardo Noslasco, its former commissioner, but it never became a topic of interest in classrooms due to misinterpretation and misinformation.

I love Filipino language and I would love to see it evolve naturally as it should in the future. In fact, some people avoid saying Filipino is a language to make KWF responsible on the issue, and if we keep neglecting the fact that Filipino is not (yet) a language it constitutionally aims to be, it will be difficult to reconnect it to its direction. What Filipino might need is a reassessment of language properties to make it inclusive for all regional language in the Philippines. Filipino became a language politically, but I am constantly curious how enriched our language would be today if it became a language linguistically.

Sources:

Trudgill, P., Dialects, London: Routledge, 2004

Gooskens, C., Schneider, C., 𝘛𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺, Language Documentation & Conservation 10. 278–305.

Rubrico, J.G.U., 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘰: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘰 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘝𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 2012

Nolasco, R.M. (2007).

Lobel, J., 𝘉𝘪𝘬𝘰𝘭. Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 158–161, 2009