There are more than 100 local languages and dialects in the Philippines, with conflicting information about dialects ranging from 150 to 200. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1 175 languages are used in the country, including 4 languages whose native speakers were not detected.2 95% of the population of the Philippines lives on the 11 largest islands and speaks 10 main languages: Tagalog, Cebu, Ilocan, Pampangan, Pangasinan, Bicol, Panay, Sambala, Ibanaga, Magindanao (Makarenko and Pogadaev, 1999, p. 67). Writing in the form of syllabic writing appeared on the Philippine Islands in the X-XI centuries, when Indian influence reached there through the Greater Sunda Islands. By the time the Spaniards arrived, only a few Filipino ethnic groups knew the written language, and scientists believe that virtually all of them had the same language (Llamzon, 1978, p. 4). But almost no monuments of this writing have been preserved, because, firstly, the Filipinos used very short-lived materials (bamboo tablets and palm leaves) for writing, and, secondly, the Spanish monks immediately began to translate local languages into the Latin alphabet. The languages of the Philippine Archipelago have long attracted the attention of both local and foreign scholars because of their diversity and special grammatical structure. The first descriptions of Filipino languages were created by Spanish monks in the early 17th century. Arriving in the Philippines, the Spaniards immediately identified Tagalog as the language of the most economically developed part of the population. It is no coincidence that the first book published in the Philippines in 1593, "Doctrina Christiana", was printed in woodcut in Spanish and Tagalog, and the Tagalog version used pre-Hispanic syllabic writing [Makarenko, 1970, p.65]. During the initial period of Spanish colonization, Filipinos continued to use their own syllabic script, and as early as 1609, Antonio de Morga wrote with admiration that "all F ... Read more