Tagalog, Filipino or Pilipino is the official language of the Philippines

Tagalog is an Austronesian language with about 60 million speakers in the Philippines, particularly in Manila, the northern areas including most of Luzon and Mindoro. It is also spoken in Canada, Guam, Midway Islands, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, UK and USA.

The Tagalog, Baybayin or Alibata alphabet is one of a number of closely related scripts used in the Philippines until the 17th Century AD. It probably developed from the Kawi script of Java, Bali and Sumatra, which in turn descended from the Pallava script, one of the southern Indian scripts derived from Brahmi.

Today the Latin alphabet is used to write to Tagalog.

Within the Philippines there are eight distinct major languages and about 80 ethnolanguages that are permutations of these eight languages. Children in the Philippines are taught in kindergarten through third grade in their own local language. English is introduced in the fourth grade. English is the language of choice to conduct official business. Many historical documents were written in Pilipino or Tagalog before English was introduced into the Filipino society.

The Philippines is considered to be the 4th largest English- speaking country, after the United States, United Kingdom, and India. Pilipino is used interchangeably with Filipino to refer to people from the Philippines. During the 1960s activists in the San Francisco Bay Area symbolically adapted "Pilipino" as self- identity to claim their ethnicity, cultural identity and cultural legacy. They explain that this term comes from two Pilipino/Tagalog words "pili" which means "choose" or "chosen" and "pino" which means "refinement, of great quality." Therefore Pilipino translates to "chosen people of quality." This label also symbolically dissociates them from the historical heritage of colonialism brought to the Philippines under the reign of King Philip of Spain after whom the country was named. A third reason for the spelling is to emphasize the absence of the letter F in the Pilipino alphabet.

Learn Tagalog in Melbourne Australia