Heavily based on Tagalog, Filipino, the Philippines’ national language, remains the language of the common people despite the predominance of English, even in Philippine courts. Filipino is constantly evolving and an intellectualised language, a Court of Appeals Judge and the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino Commissioner said.
By Lorie Halliday
When Filipinos meet their fellows abroad, they speak in the Filipino language first. If they can sense from their accents that none of them sound like a Tagalog native speaker, they will likely ask each other which part of the Philippines they come from. If they find out they are from the same city or region, they’re more likely to switch to their common language.
The majority of Filipinos still speak their native language and Filipino in their day-to-day lives. The Philippines has at least 175 native languages, with Tagalog, Cebuano and Ilocano as the most widely-spoken regional languages.
Filipino is the national language of the Philippines and heavily based on Tagalog, a regional language widely spoken in the northern part of the country.
This is why Filipino and Tagalog are often used interchangeably.
The official languages in the Philippines are Filipino and English, which is the primary language of officialdom. It means English predominates in fundamental institutions. Even our laws, court hearings and issuances are in English.
“Our constitution is primarily in English, although there is a Filipino translation, but because it was first written in English, so that’s how it’s understood by the courts,” Philippine Court of Appeals Associate Justice Apolinario Bruselas Jr. told me in an interview.
But the problem is that the majority of defendants in criminal cases are Filipinos who do not speak English, he said. (Read more about how Filipino defendants face the same language barriers that they would in UK courts in my article published by the Chartered Institute of Linguists on its newsletter The Linguist Summer Edition 2026, page 24.)
Bruselas has been writing court decisions in Filipino and encouraging his fellow judges to do the same, not only during Buwan ng Wika (Language Month), a month-long celebration of the national language in August.
“We judges are very comfortable in using English. It takes a long time to write a decision in the Filipino language because everything we read is in English,” he said.
In 2025, a bill was proposed that would require all penal laws to be translated into Filipino, Bisaya (a group of languages, spoken in the Visayas areas, which includes Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Waray-waray) and Ilocano.
This would be led by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language; KWF)1, which is mandated “to undertake, coordinate and promote researches for the development, propagation and preservation of Filipino and other Philippine languages.”
A living language is one that is used everyday
Bruselas adheres to using Filipino as a living language, which is one that we use everyday. He said just like English now is no longer the English in the time of Shakespeare, Filipino today is no longer how it was in the time of Manuel L. Quezon, the first President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.
Quezon, known as Ama ng Wikang Pambansa (Father of the National Language), proclaimed Tagalog as the basis of the national language, following the 1935 constitutional mandate for national unity.
A living language is the current form of the language, which is shaped by how people use it. In the case of the Filipino language, it is mostly mixed with English words – often referred to as Taglish, a portmanteau of Tagalog and English.
Bruselas said he hasn’t come across a discussion or conversation that entirely used Filipino words. He also pointed out that we switched between Filipino and English during our conversation.
Filipino is constantly evolving
Filipino is a language that is constantly evolving, KWF Chairperson and Commissioner Atty. Marites Barrios-Taran told me in an interview.
Aside from having additional words from major Philippine languages, Filipino also has English borrowed words “na hindi na natin sinasauli ‘pag nagamit na (that we never return once used),” she said.
When using borrowed words in Filipino sentences, either we spell them using the Filipino alphabet, which Taran said, “kung anong basa ay siya ring baybay (spelled based on pronunciation), or retain their original English spelling. Indeed, words like data, website, digital, apartment, adopted, impact, climate and climate change can all be found on KWF’s online Filipino dictionary, which has a recently launched mobile app.
There’s been a resistance against Tagalog as the basis of Filipino until now, as many people from Visayas and Mindanao claim that Cebuano is more widely spoken than Tagalog, Bruselas pointed out. But as time goes by, more and more people have learned to use Tagalog and Filipino, while some remain confused how they are even different.
Taran said Tagalog is a regional language, and Filipino is our national language composed of words mostly from Tagalog and other major Philippine languages. Filipino is an amalgamation – including Spanish and English languages. There are Bisaya terms added to the Filipino dictionary as well, and if people keep on using these Bisaya words in speaking and writing in Filipino, then it is the current form of Filipino.
An intellectualised language
The Filipino language is intellectualised, and it just needs to be used everyday by encouraging children and youth to speak Filipino in households and schools, Taran said.
An intellectualised language means it can be used in high functions, such as discussing abstract and complex concepts, and is suitable as a medium in education, law, government, administration, science and technology.
“Filipino is cultivated … the structures are in place; what is needed is merely to continue to encourage and support on-going activities,” according to Andrew Gonzales in his journal article, The Intellectualization of Filipino: Agenda For The Twenty-First Century,2 originally published in December 1988. That was almost four decades ago.
Gonzales said, “… not all intellectual fields of specialization need to be developed at once, nor is it absolutely necessary in the long term for every field of endeavor to be intellectualized to the same degree. The choice depends on the country and its resources.”
Bruselas noticed other sectors are gradually using Filipino. Most of our newscasters now, including the major TV stations, deliver news in Filipino, he said. “I think narealise nila na magtouch base sa Filipino. Dati English yan eh. Sa Kongreso, Senate hearings, public hearings halo na English, Filipino. They realise na importante magamit ang wikang Filipino,” he added.
(I think they realised to touch base on Filipino. They used to be in English. In Congress, Senate hearings, public hearings are now a mix of English and Filipino. They realised that it is important to use the Filipino language.)
Taran shared that she recently attended a graduation ceremony conducted fully in Filipino, and showed me classic books translated into Filipino – such as those of Ernest Hemingway and Gustave Flaubert – as well as the huge printed book of Diksyunaryong Filipino (Filipino Dictionary) that are available at KWF.
No matter how the Filipino language will evolve, what matters is that Filipinos continue to use their national language to strive for unity, justice and prosperity, Bruselas said. Democracy thrives with people fully understanding the law of the land, especially their human rights, he added.
Notes
1 Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino; https://kwf.gov.ph
2 Gonzales, A (1988) ‘The Intellectualization of Filipino: Agenda for the Twenty-First Century’. In Philippine Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 19, No. 2
About the author
Lorie Halliday
Lorie Ann Halliday is a UK-based freelance English-Filipino/Tagalog Interpreter and Translator, as well as for English-Cebuano (Bisaya). She is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and holds a Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI) Law. For two years, Lorie was the Executive Director of a London-based charity serving Filipino migrant communities in the UK. She has worked as a professional journalist for over a decade covering Southeast Asia, culminating in her role as Senior News Editor at CNN Philippines. She holds a Master of Arts in International Journalism Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is a member of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, and has lived in Portugal, Hong Kong and Laos. Learn more on www.loriehalliday.com.
