The official Manila language is Filipino. Some people believe Filipino to be a mixture of all the Philippines languages, dialects, English and Spanish. But actually, Filipino is another name for Tagalog – one of the indigenous languages.
Taglog is one language which is formed by English, Arabic, Old Malay, Chinese, Tamil, Sanskrit and Japanese. It also has close association with languages like Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bikol and Waray-waray. As it is a Malayo-polynesian language, it is also related to other Austronesia languages like Tetum, Hawaiian, Malay, Samoan, Paiwan, Chamorro, Fijian, Tahitian, Indonesian and Malagasy.
Back in 1937, the First National Assembly selected Tagalog as the national language. Later in 1961 Tagalog was called Philipino and then in 1972 it was again renamed as Filipino.
People in Manila do not just speak Filipino. Some of them speak other languages such as Chinese, Spanish or English which can be counted as the second official language of Manila. Now in Manila, the people from the middle and upper class are bilingual and sometimes multilingual.
However, English is mainly spoken in government organisations, schools and during business transactions while Books are written in Tagalog. The national media of Philippines also used Tagalog as the principal language.
LANGUAGES OF MANILA
Thursday, December 9, 2010, 10:54 PM