Talk:Languages of the Philippines

Filipino / Tagalog

How about instead of saying "Filipino is in practice almost completely composed of the Tagalog as spoken in Manila," which is slightly wrong, why not "Filipino is in practice composed of Tagalog and English"? Filipino has developed into somewhat a new language, and several Visayan languages made its way already. Even baseball became Beysbol lol. --Howard the Duck 16:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

You are right in saying that a lot of words in English has crept into Tagalog, which we call Filino. But I believe, you would agree when I say that vocabulary isn't the only reason to declare a language separate from another. Since, the grammar of Tagalog and Filipino are one and the same, how can we say that Filipino is a mixture of Tagalog and English? Remember that when verbs are conjugated, even when the term is a borrowed vocabulary, the rules of Tagalog is being used. Example 'to save' (a computer file) will be rendered either isi-nave (or simply sineyv (phonetically)) in the past and ise-save in the future. No one will use 'Saved ko na ang file.' when he meands 'I already saved the file.'. Instead, he will say 'Sineyv (phonetically) ko na ang file.'. 61.9.13.66 (talk) 14:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

(1) What is explicitly stated in the constitution (Article XIV Section 6) is that as it evolves, the Filipino language shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.

(2) I think an assertion that "Filipino in practice is ..." (emphasis mine) is improper in an encyclopedia. The Filipino language has a regulating body, the Commission on the Filipino Language, and the language is whatever that body says it is (think of it as de jure vs. de facto). Their website isn't published in a language which I can read, so I'm not sure to what extent the language includes English borrowings. Skimming the text on the website, I don't see a lot of English borrowings. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:31, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

"Philippine languages comparison chart" section

I just want to mention that there is a pretty neat illustration of a Philippine language tree at Scott, William Henry (1984), Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History, New Day Publishers, p. 50, ISBN 9711002264, http://books.google.com/books?id=FSlwAAAAMAAJ . Some of you may have the book on your bookshelves and, if not, it is surely available in many libraries. I've thought several times that a similar illustration might be useful in this article, but my own artictic ability is near zero. Scott's illustration is a simplified version of the tree in Charles Walton (1979), A Philippine Language Tree, Archives of Languages of the World  (which I have not read). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility

The section "Mutual intelligibility" does not say a word about mutual intelligibility of the dialects. Hellerick (talk) 15:19, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Esperanto

I just edited the article as it said that "Esperanto" was the original official language of the Philippines and became the lingua franca in the late nineteenth century! Umm, I think maybe you mean Spanish? Mhulbert (talk) 16:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to delete remarks.

I propose that the following remarks be deleted from the National and official languages section:

This is in contrast to Morocco, where Spanish is spoken in the northern part of that country and is becoming a popular language to learn, after French among the country's northern inhabitants. In Francophone Africa, the use of French, despite being a native language of only a minority of people who live in that part of Africa, is actively promoted, even if (as in Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) it is not an official one.

Fascinating — but irrelevant.

--174.16.21.62 (talk) 18:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)How about instead of saying "Filipino is in practice almost completely composed of the Tagalog as spoken in Manila," which is slightly wrong, why not "Filipino is in practice composed of Tagalog and English"? Filipino has developed into somewhat a new language, and several Visayan languages made its way already. Even baseball became

Confusion

The article says that most languages spoken in the Philippines are of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. Isn't Tagalog which is spoken by the majority of the population off an Indic Script and language, Sanskrit. It should therefore be classified under the Indo-European language family. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.206.125 (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

No - Tagalog is very definitely an Austronesian language with a Sanskrit script. See Tagalog for more details. Simon (talk) 02:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Asa Familia

"The Asa Familia own 3 of the languages": what does this mean? In particular, what is the Asa Familia, and what does it mean for it/them to "own" three languages? Mcswell (talk) 19:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Good question. It was added by an anon in November 2011 in this November 2011 edit -- the only edit to date from that IP address. It is unclear and unsupported. I've removed it. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC)