Tagalog phrasebook

Filipino or Pilipino (Wikang filipino) is the national language of the Philippines, according to the country's constitution, and is spoken by 90 million people worldwide.

Filipino is a modified version of Tagalog (Wikang Tagalog), the main language of southern Luzon and some nearby areas. Originally, Filipino was intended to include many words from the numerous other languages of the Philippine islands, but this project stalled. In reality nobody actually uses official Filipino, but rather plain Tagalog instead.

Tagalog is a member of the Austronesian language family, fairly closely related to the other languages of the Philippines such as Cebuano, and more distantly to Malay/Indonesian and various languages of the Pacific islands. Due to European influences in the Philippines, it has loanwords from both Spanish and English, and is one of the few languages in Southeast Asia to use the Latin alphabet. Baybayin, the pre-colonial writing system is sometimes taught in schools, but not commonly used in everyday life, although the use of the script is growing in popularity and efforts are being made to revive it.

About a quarter of the population of the Philippines speak Tagalog as a native language and many more understand it as a second language. Filipino and English are the two official languages of the Philippines, with English being the more prestigious of the two and exclusively used in court judgments and legislation, though the national anthem is in Tagalog. Filipino is widely used in schools throughout the islands, including regions where the local language is not Tagalog.

The vast majority of Filipinos are either bilingual (Filipino and English) or trilingual (Filipino, English, and the native language of the speaker). English is one of the official languages of the Philippines and is overwhelmingly used as the main language of government, commerce, and education. Filipinos use Philippine English, an English variety based largely on US English, though it might be spoken with a distinct accent and contains certain colloquialisms and slang unique to it (e.g. the most common word for "toilet" or "bathroom" in the Philippines is the Philippine English "comfort room", usually shortened to the initials "CR").

Code-switching is common in everyday speech, with most conversations incorporating both English and Filipino to a certain extent. Some English words are even used exclusively when using the Filipino equivalent can be considered too formal (e.g. "mall", "computer", "internet", "highway", "hotel", and "taxi"). If you are having trouble finding the correct word or phrase in Filipino, don't hesitate to switch to English. For example: instead of saying "Saan ang labasan?" (Where is the exit?), you can say either "Saan ang exit?" or "Where is the labasan".