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Language Lineage

Philippine

More than 150 languages that Blust unites through a small set of shared vocabulary innovations, most of them in a dozen or so well-defined 'microgroups' such as Cordilleran, Central Luzon and Greater Central Philippine. Whether the whole forms one subgroup is disputed.

c. 2000 BCE – presentThe Philippine archipelago, with the Batanes Islands and Orchid Island (Taiwan) to the north and northern Sulawesi (Indonesia) to the south
On this page
  1. Many Groups, One Archipelago
  2. Scripts, Spanish and Filipino
  3. In its own words
  4. Where it's spoken
  5. Turning points
  6. Contested classifications

01

Many Groups, One Archipelago

The Philippines is home to more than 150 Austronesian languages, and closely related ones are spoken just beyond its borders: Yami (Tao) on Orchid Island off Taiwan, and Sangir, Minahasan and Gorontalo-Mongondow in northern Sulawesi. They fall into a dozen or so clear 'microgroups'. Cordilleran languages such as Ilocano, Pangasinan and Ifugao fill northern Luzon; Central Luzon includes Kapampangan; and Greater Central Philippine, proposed by Robert Blust in 1991, covers Tagalog, Bikol, the Bisayan languages (Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Tausug) and most of the languages of Mindanao.

The microgroups are often told apart by sound changes. Conant's 'RGH law' (1911) describes how Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *R has a different reflex in each: *baqeRu 'new' is Tagalog bago, Ilocano baro, Kapampangan bayu and Pangasinan balo.

Greater Central Philippine covers a huge area but is shallow, with languages that are still fairly similar. Blust explains this as the result of an expansion around 500 BCE that replaced most of the earlier languages of the central and southern islands. Pockets of older diversity survive, among them the North Mangyan languages of Mindoro, the Kalamian languages of northern Palawan and several languages of the Negrito peoples, the islands' earliest inhabitants, who adopted Austronesian speech.

02

Scripts, Spanish and Filipino

When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, Tagalog and several other lowland languages were written in baybayin, a Brahmi-derived script that marked each consonant with an inherent vowel. The first book printed in the Philippines, the Doctrina Christiana of 1593, gives its Tagalog text in both baybayin and Latin letters. Within two centuries the Latin alphabet had replaced baybayin almost everywhere, although related scripts are still used by the Hanunó'o and Buhid of Mindoro and the Tagbanwa of Palawan.

Three centuries of Spanish rule left thousands of loanwords: Tagalog kutsara 'spoon', bintana 'window', sapatos 'shoes', and a counting system in which Spanish numbers are used for prices and clock time. English followed under American rule after 1898.

In 1937 the Commonwealth government chose Tagalog as the basis of a national language, renamed Pilipino in 1959. The 1987 constitution names Filipino, in practice standard Tagalog open to words from other languages, as the national language, with English as a second official language. Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and the other large languages remain the everyday speech of their regions, and most Filipinos speak two or three languages.

A sample

In its own words

Tagalog

Magandang umaga po.
Magandang
good.LNK
umaga
morning
po.
HON
‘Good morning (said politely).’
Sources (1)
  • Schachter, Paul & Fe T. Otanes. 1972. Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Philippinesc. 105 million
  2. Indonesiac. 2–3 million
  3. Malaysia
  4. Taiwan

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 500 BCEContested

    Greater Central Philippine expansion

    On Blust's account, speakers of Proto-Greater Central Philippine spread from the central islands through the southern Philippines and replaced most of the languages already there, which is why the region's languages are so alike. The date is an estimate from the languages' degree of difference.

    Sources (2)
    • Blust, Robert. 1991. The Greater Central Philippines hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics 30(2): 73–129.
    • Blust, Robert. 2005. The linguistic macrohistory of the Philippines: Some speculations. In Current Issues in Philippine Linguistics and Anthropology, ed. Hsiu-chuan Liao & Carl R. Galvez Rubino. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines & SIL Philippines.
  2. Contact1565 – 1898

    Spanish rule

    From Legazpi's settlement at Cebu in 1565, Spain rules the lowland Philippines for more than three centuries. Missionaries write grammars and dictionaries of the main languages, and Spanish loanwords enter every lowland language.

    Sources (1)
    • Scott, William Henry. 1994. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
  3. Writing1593

    The Doctrina Christiana

    The first book printed in the Philippines sets Tagalog in both baybayin and the Latin alphabet. Missionary printing in Latin letters gradually displaces baybayin over the following two centuries.

    Sources (1)
    • Scott, William Henry. 1984. Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History, revised ed. Quezon City: New Day.
  4. Split1937 – 1987

    Tagalog becomes Filipino

    Tagalog is chosen in 1937 as the basis of the national language, renamed Pilipino in 1959 and Filipino in the 1987 constitution. The choice was resented in some non-Tagalog regions, especially the Cebuano-speaking south.

    Sources (1)
    • Gonzalez, Andrew. 1998. The language planning situation in the Philippines. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(5–6).

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Minority position

    Philippine

    the languages of the Philippines, with Yami and those of northern Sulawesi, share a single ancestor, Proto-Philippines, below Proto-Malayo-Polynesian

    Evidence for

    Blust points to vocabulary innovations shared across the microgroups. Blust argues that the low diversity of the region is itself evidence: an early Proto-Philippine expansion would have replaced the first Malayo-Polynesian languages of the archipelago, leaving one family where an older and more varied set had been. The grouping is used as a branch in many handbooks.

    Evidence against

    Lawrence Reid argued in 1982 that no convincing innovations define Proto-Philippines, and has since argued that the microgroups may branch separately from Malayo-Polynesian. Malcolm Ross has suggested that the Batanic languages of the far north are an early offshoot of Malayo-Polynesian in their own right. On this view 'Philippine' is a geographical label, like 'Western Malayo-Polynesian'. The tree draws it as one branch for convenience.

    Sources (4)
    • Reid, Lawrence A. 1982. The demise of Proto-Philippines. In Papers from the Third International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, vol. 2, ed. Amran Halim, Lois Carrington & S. A. Wurm. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
    • Blust, Robert. 1991. The Greater Central Philippines hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics 30(2): 73–129.
    • Reid, Lawrence A. 2018. Modeling the linguistic situation in the Philippines. In Let's Talk about Trees: Genetic Relationships of Languages and Their Phylogenic Representation, ed. Ritsuko Kikusawa & Lawrence A. Reid. Senri Ethnological Studies 98. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
    • Ross, Malcolm. 2005. The Batanic languages in relation to the early history of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1(2).