Third, to be consistent with the method of using the eight additional letters in the Ortagrapiyang Pambansa (National Orthography) being promoted by the KWF. Now that the national language has an F and is called Filipino, isn’t it simply logical to promote the spelling, “Filipinas,” and gradually discourage the use of “Pilipinas”? The first step in this language change was the eschewing of the abakada and the promotion and spread of the alpabeto with the additional letters C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, Z. This was restated in the 1987 Constitution, together with the proposed modernization and enrichment of the national language by way of the native languages. In the 1973 Constitution, it was stated that “Filipino” instead of “Pilipino” should be the name of the national language. The national language using the abakada). Written in the Pilipino language (which was the name given in 1959 to Translation for “Filipinas” and “Philippines” in works and documents Without the F was promoted for general usage, and continued as the “Pilipinas,” the name used starting around the first decade of the 20thĬentury and more consistently around the 1940s when the abakada.“Philippines,” the name used by the Americans when they entered our country in 1898, and officially used by the Constitution of 1935 and up to the current Constiution of 1987.“Filipinas,” the name given by Villalobos in 1548 and used officially by Legazpi when he established the Spanish colony beginning 1565, which was used continuously for 300 years until the time of Rizal and Bonifacio, and again used as the name of the First Asian Republic – the “Republica Filipinas” established in Malolos in 1898.There are now three forms of the name of our country: 13-19 (12 April 2012) of the Commission on the Filipino Languageįirst, history. There are three reasons behind the Board of Commissioners Resolution This primer was prepared in 2013.– Editor Why ‘Filipinas’? The spellings, he said, also showed the inclusive nature of the language development they had been promoting – the words used the letter F, which could be found in a multitude of languages across the Philippines but wasn’t in the old Tagalog-based alphabet.Īlmario, National Artist for Literature, answers here some of the frequently asked questions in this debate. Almario said these were in accordance with the country’s original name Filipinas. This policy reverses the unanimous resolution of the KWF board in 2013 to spell the two words as Filipinas and Filipino.

They cited the Tagalog translation of the 1987 Constitution, which spells the two words that way. A few days before the start of August, which is National Language month in the Philippines, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) announced, through its fairly new chairman Arthur Casanova, that the agency had agreed to spell the country’s name as Pilipinas, and its citizens’ name as Pilipino.

Abakadang tagalog