Filipino is the official national language and one of the two official languages of the Philippines. It is also known as the modern Filipino alphabet. It is made up of 28 letters which are also called títik or létra, and each represents a spoken sound.
Out of 28 letters, 20 letters came from the native Abakada (Tagalog Alphabet), whereas another 8 letters borrowed from Spanish Alphabet. These are also classified either as patínig or bokáblo (vowels) and katínig or konsonánte (consonants).
Let's start with vowels.
Filipino Vowels (patínig or bokáblo)
Most languages in the Philippines share vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. After centuries of Spanish colonisation and the standardisation of Filipino as the national lingua franca, the vowels /e/ and /o/ became more common.
Filipino Vowels Uppercase
Filipino Vowel Lowercase
Filipino Consonants (katínig or konsonánte)
The abakada, or Tagalog Alphabet, developed in 1930 by Lope K. Santos had only 20 letters (five vowels and fifteen consonants). The remaining letters were later added to make 28 letters out of which 23 letters are consonants.
Filipino Consonants Uppercase
Filipino Consonants Lowercase
Filipino Numerals
Filipino numerals are the symbols used to write numbers in the Filipino script. They are used to write decimal numbers, instead of the latin numbers.
Features
- Filipino use a focus system. A marker (ang) is used to denote the subject of a sentence
Interesting Facts about Filipino Language
- Filipino is the second language spoken for most Filipinos
- In Filipino: Each consonant is pronounced with an /a/ sound at the end. For e.g. bah, gah
- Vowels are fully pronounced like the vowels in Spanish
- Speakers of Filipino have the most difficulty with the consonants F, V, and Thand the schwa vowel sound.
- There are multiple phonemes in English that are not found in Filipino
- Unlike in English, word order does not affect the meaning
- Pronouns are not used to indicate gender in Filipino language.
Filipino at a glance
Filipino (/ˌfɪlɪˈpiːnoʊ//) is one of the national language of Philippines and it is spoken by over 45 million people around the world. It is spoken in central and southern Luzon, in Manila, and on some of the other islands. Compared to other languages, it is one of the easiest languages to study and master. Below is some of the quick summary of the Filipino language:
| Pronunciation: | [/ˌfɪlɪˈpiːnoʊ//] |
| Native To: | Philippines |
| Number of Speakers: | 45 million |
| Language family: | Austronesian |
| Writing System: | Latin (Filipino alphabet) |
| Spoken in: | Philippines |
| Status: | Official Language in Philippines (in the form of Filipino) |
| language code (ISO 639-1): | fil |
A Complete Filipino Alphabet Chart
Below is a list of complete Filipino Alphabets Chart
Filipino Vowels Uppercase
Filipino Vowel Lowercase
Filipino Consonants Uppercase
Filipino Consonants Lowercase
Digit:
Special Characters:
