In 1959, the Institute of National Language renamed the Tagalog-Based National Language into Pilipino. This alphabet was called the Abecedario, the original alphabet of the Catholicized Filipinos, which variously had either 28, 29, 31, or 32 letters. When most of the Philippine languages were first written in the Latin script, they used the Spanish alphabet. When the Spaniards arrived in 1521 and began to colonize the islands of the Philippines in 1565, they introduced the Latin script to the Catholicized Filipinos. The scripts that are still in use today by the indigenous Mangyan groups of the Philippines are the Buhid and the Hanunó’o script. A controversial and debatable script of the Philippines is the Eskayan script.īaybayin script began to decline in the 17th century and became obsolete in the 18th century. Examples of this ancient Philippine writing system which descended from the Brāhmī script are the Kawi, Baybayin, Buhid, Hanunó’o, Tagbanwa, Butuan, Kapampangan and other Brahmic family of scripts known to antiquity. And it also raises questions about what an original set of Alphabitos might have been like (if they ever existed).ĭuring the Pre-Hispanic Era, most of the languages of the Philippines were written in abugida, an ancient segmental writing system. Some questions have arisen about the Latin script used for the Filipino alphabet, and what the original Filipino alphabet before the arrival of the Spanish might have looked like.

There are even special “power words” that have particular effectiveness. Letters can be further combined to generate “words” that are the basis for specific techniques. At present, all languages of the Philippines may be written using the modern Filipino alphabet (officially adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada.At maelstrom, the training over the last few months has included the challenging “Alphabitos” – slashing and thrusting combinations that trace each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The Abakada was replaced in 1976 with an expanded alphabet containing an additional 11 letters (C, CH, F, J, LL, Ñ, Q, RR, V, X, and Z) which was in turn replaced with the current 28-letter modern alphabet. Santos developed the Ang Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa (The Grammar of the National Language) which, apart from containing grammar rules, contained the 20-letter alphabet designated as Abakada.

Following this, the development of a dictionary and grammar book for this 'national language' started. Initially, these reforms were not broadly adopted when they were proposed but gradually became popular into the early 20th century.įollowing the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, the government selected Tagalog as basis for a 'national language' (i.e. Like other proponents, he suggested to 'indigenize' the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the letters C and Q with K. José Rizal was one of several proponents (including Trinidad Pardo de Tavera) of reforming the orthographies of the various Philippine languages in the late 19th-century. Main article: Tagalog language § Writing systemĭuring the pre-Hispanic era, Old Tagalog was written using the Kawi or the Baybayin script.įor three centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules.ĭr.

Filipino alphabet abakada