Tagalog is spoken as a first language in the Philippines by about 22 million people and worldwide it is spoken by another 68 million. It is the official language of the Philippines although it is often called Filipino.

The first constitution in the Philippines in 1897 declared Tagalog the official language but since then various people and institutions have tried to change the name of the language.  In 1939 it became Pilipino.  In 1971 it became Filipino and when a new constitution was drawn up in 1987, it named Filipino as the national language. The constitution does specify that as the Filipino language evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages. (There are actually over 170 Philippine languages of which only about 10 are important regionally)

In 2007, the chair of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language), was quoted as saying: “Are "Tagalog," "Pilipino" and "Filipino" different languages? No, they are mutually intelligible varieties, and therefore belong to one language.”

Languages that have made significant input into Tagalog are Spanish (about 40% of informal conversation is made up of Spanish words), English, Hindi, Arabic, Sanskrit, Old Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Japanese and Tamil.

Tagalog is the fifth most-spoken language in the USA with over a 1.4 million speakers (2005 census) and in Canada it is spoken by over 235,000 people.

Enjoy your voyage into the Tagalog language. Discover more from a native Tagalog speaker here.

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