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Would you consider Filipino using barrowed words from English, and Spanish?
Nov 29, 2015 1:44 AM
Answers · 2
1
***PART TWO*** I'm sure you've noticed that with English or Spanish words used in Tagalog, these are conjugated as if they were native words. You can see this in examples like "eskwelahan" [combining Spanish escuela with the -han locative suffix] or "nag-email" [using e-mail as a past tense actor focus verb]. However, it's not just these two languages that have worked their way into those of the Philippines, since you can find words from Sanskrit, Malay, Indonesian, and Mandarin in the mix as well and yet we don't call these other Philippine languages anything but what they are. The fact is that languages change over time, adopting vocabulary (and rarely grammar) from their neighbors due to trade, religious influence, colonialism, and other factors. This doesn't mean that we need to call each language by a different name, only that we need to acknowledge a number of influences on the way we speak.
November 29, 2015
1
Are you asking if the difference between Filipino and Tagalog is that Filipino uses English and Spanish words while Tagalog doesn't? Because that's a somewhat complicated question. The short answer would be "not really", since spoken Tagalog and Filipino really aren't that different. Now here's the long answer. According to the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, which is the Philippine government's official language body, Filipino is the national language of the Philippines and incorporates words from a variety of languages, among which are Tagalog, English, Spanish, Cebuano, and Ilocano (basically any non-Tagalog words that find their way into speech. This would define Tagalog as one of Filipino's many influences rather than its main influence, which is a weird thing to say considering that Filipino grammar is entirely from Tagalog and its vocabulary is mostly the same as well. Now this is where it gets tricky. As I said, despite to what the KWF says, Tagalog really is the main basis for Filipino. Due to 350 and about 45 years of Spanish and American colonialism respectively, both languages found their way into spoken and written Tagalog as well, but only really vocabulary (just as with words from non-Tagalog Philippine languages). This same phenomenon can be seen in every Philippine language I've encountered or studied, though usually its appearance depends on a number of factors, like the setting, age of the speaker/writer, education level, income, distance relative to a major city or town, etc. For instance, younger speakers would be more likely to use a heavy blend of English and Tagalog online, whereas an older person giving a speech may pick only one language or the other.
November 29, 2015
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