ICET Tutorial

What is the difference between Tagalog and Filipino?
1. Tagalog comes from 2 words , taga ilog, which means people by the river. Since the Philippines has a lot of languages, with Tagalog being one of them and being widely spoken in the capital, it was declared the national language in the 1937 Constitution by then president Manuel L Quezon. It contains 20 letters.
2. Pilipino comes from 2 words, pili pino, which means finely chosen. Since the people from the other regions in the Philippines felt the term Tagalog didn't represent fully the nation's identity, the national language was renamed Pilipino in 1959. Pilipino includes words from the other major languages in the country. It also contains 20 letters.
3. Filipino comes from Pilipino. Since the country has adopted Pilipino and English as its official languages in its 1972 Constitution, the national language was renamed Filipino in the 1986 Constitution to reflect the influence of other countries in our historical identity. It contains 28 letters, 8 more letters from Western languages particularly English
For this reason, Filipino is a language that can accommodate foreign words in its structure without diluting its unique characteristic.