The modern Filipino alphabet ( fil, makabagong alpabetong Filipino), otherwise known as the Filipino alphabet ( fil, alpabetong Filipino), is the alphabet of the

Filipino language Filipino (; , ) is an Austronesian language. It is the national language ( / ) of the Philippines, and one of the two official languages of the country, with English. It is a standardized variety of Tagalog based on the native dialect, spok ...

, the official national language and one of the two

official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their su ...

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 ...

. The modern Filipino alphabet is made up of 28 letters, which includes the entire 26-letter set of the

ISO basic Latin alphabet The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets ( uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and ...

, the Spanish '' Ñ'' and the '' Ng'' digraph of

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...

. It replaced the Pilipino Abakada alphabet of the Fourth Republic. Today, the modern Filipino alphabet may also be used to write all autochthonous

and

Chavacano Chavacano or Chabacano is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speaker ...

, a Spanish-derived creole. In 2013, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino released the ''Ortograpiyang Pambansa'' ("National Orthography"), a new set of guidelines that resolved phonemic representation problems previously encountered when writing some

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...

and dialects.

Alphabet

C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, and Z are not used in native Filipino words.

Letters

The 28 letters of the Alpabeto are called ''títik'' or ''létra'', and each represents a spoken sound. These are classed either as ''patínig'' or ''bokáblo'' (vowels) and ''katínig'' or ''konsonánte'' (consonants). The letters' names are pronounced and collated in the same way as English, except for Ñ .

Consonants

The Abakada developed in the early 20th century had fewer consonants. By the middle of the century, letters (baybayin) were added and later on reduced due to its ideology which is English that is approximately radical to English alphabet with the release of the Ortograpiyang Pambansa in 2014. It was a major change to add these letters and thus modernise the writing system and to preserve sounds that are found in native Philippine languages. The digraphs and manuscripts were chosen to be placed in other ''wordings'' for privileges and adaptations. Examples of the added letters:

Vowels

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 A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'', the vowels /e/ and /o/ became more common.

References

External links