The Abakada alphabet was an "indigenized"

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

adopted for the Tagalog-based Filipino national language in 1940. The alphabet, which contains 20

letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

, was introduced in the grammar book developed by Lope K. Santos for the newly-designated national language based on Tagalog. The alphabet was officially adopted by the Institute of National Language ( fil, Surián ng Wikang Pambansâ). The Abakada alphabet has since been superseded by the modern

Filipino alphabet The modern Filipino alphabet ( fil, makabagong alpabetong Filipino), otherwise known as the Filipino alphabet ( fil, alpabetong Filipino), is the alphabet of the Filipino language, the official national language and one of the two official langu ...

adopted in 1987.

Order/collation of the Abakada

The collation of letters in the Abakada closely follows those of other Latin-based spelling systems, with the digraph ''ng'' inserted after ''n''. When spelling or naming each consonant, its sound is always pronounced with an "a" at the end (e.g. "ba", "ka", etc). This is also the reason for the system’s name.

History

During the pre-Hispanic era,

Old Tagalog Old Tagalog, also known as Old Filipino ( tl, Lumang Tagalog; Baybayin: pre-virama: , post-virama rus kudlit ; post-virama amudpod ), is the earliest form of the Tagalog language during the Classical period. It is the primary language of pre- ...

was written using the Kawi or the Baybayin script. For three centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules. Dr. José Rizal was one of several proponents (including

Trinidad Pardo de Tavera Trinidad Hermenegildo José María Juan Francisco Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho (13 April 1857 – 26 March 1925) was a Filipino physician, historian and politician of Spanish and Portuguese descent who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Phil ...

) of reforming the orthographies of the various Philippine languages in the late 19th-century. Like other proponents, he suggested to "indigenize" the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the letters ''C'' and ''Q'' with ''K''. Initially, these reforms were not broadly adopted when they were proposed but gradually became popular into the early 20th century. Following the establishment of the

Philippine Commonwealth The Commonwealth of the Philippines ( es, Commonwealth de Filipinas or ; tl, Komonwelt ng Pilipinas) was the administrative body that governed the Philippines from 1935 to 1946, aside from a period of exile in the Second World War from 1942 ...

in 1935, the government selected Tagalog as basis for a "national language" (i.e. Filipino). Following this, the development of a dictionary and grammar book for this "national language" started. In 1939, Lope K. Santos developed the ''Ang Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa'' (The Grammar of the National Language) which, apart from containing grammar rules, contained the 20-letter alphabet designated as ''Abakada''. The Abakada was replaced in 1976 with an expanded alphabet containing an additional 11 letters (C, CH, F, J, LL, Ñ, Q, RR, V, X, and Z) which was in turn replaced with the current 28-letter modern alphabet. At present, all

languages of the Philippines There are some 120 to 187 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages native to the archipelago. A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties generally called C ...

may be written using the modern

(officially adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abakada alphabet Latin alphabets Orthographies by language Filipino language Tagalog language Cebuano language Hiligaynon language Ilocano language 1940 introductions 1940 in the Philippines

Order/collation of the Abakada

History

See also

References