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"Thou shalt love thy language as thyself." — Felipe Aira.

Tagalog orthography

June 22, 2008

In this post, I’ll be explaining to you all the Tagalog orthography and a little bit of history about it. And for those of you who don’t even know what I’m talking about, and/or confused just ask me by posting a comment at this post or at my site’s message board.

Introduction

Tagalog is language spoken in the Philippines under the Austronesian language family. I’ll give you more information about the Tagalog language on future posts.

Orthography is, in the most simplest of definitions, the way things are spelt. Almost all languages in the world has a standard orthography defined by tradition and/or language reforms imposed by its governing bodies.

English has its own orthography, and has two major variants: the British orthography and the American orthography. In the British orthography, things are spelt as colour, specialise, dramatisation, metre and anaemia while in the American orthography, things are spelt as color, specialize, dramatization, meter and anemia. There are further more differences between the two. In Tagalog, however, there are many types of orthography: Pre-colonial Baybayin, Spanish-influenced Baybayin, Spanish orthography and Tagalog orthography with only the Tagalog orthography in current use; all others are already obsoleted.

There are three kinds of orthography.

  • Phonemic — This kind of orthography is very consistent with how it is spoken, and spelling irregularities and exceptions are somewhat rare. In simple terms, speak as you write. Tagalog can be classified as phonemic.

  • Morphophonemic — This kind of orthography is still quite phonemic, however, spelling quite relies on its word origin.

  • Defective — The spelling of words are very inconsistent on how it is spoken, and there are hundred of exceptions to its spelling rules.

    English and French can be considered as one of the most orthographically defective languages in the world. That is why “lead” and “read” have different pronunciations depending on the context, “written” and “Britain” sound the same, and “door” and “drool” are pronounced differently despite having the same dipthongs, the “oo”. French is, however, even more defective; almost a third or a half of the word will be left unpronouced.

Baybayin

See my previous post about this for more information. http://felipeaira.i.ph/blogs/felipeaira/2008/06/20/baybayin/.

Spanish orthography

In the past, due to Spanish colonisation, Tagalog was spelt under the Spanish orthography. The following is the alphabet used in Tagalog.

 A B C Ch D E F G H I J L Ll M N Ñ O P Q R Rr S T U V X Y Z

As you may have noticed it lacked the ”k”, “ng” and ”w” letters, which are all extensively used on Tagalog, especially the “ng”. As a replacement, the Spaniards applied “c” and “q” for “k”, and “o” and “u” for “w” as they did on their language. However, since in Spanish, the /ŋ/ sound only appears scarcely and in “ng”, and still that was pronounced as /ŋg/ not /ŋ/, the Spaniards used “n~g” and, later, “ñg” to represent /ŋ/. That is why in the Spanish orthography /taŋa/ (stupid) was spelt as “tan~ga” or “tañga”, and /tiŋin/ was spelt as “tin~gin” or “tiñgin” while in the modern Tagalog orthography, it is spelt as “tingin”. I’ll explain the Spanish orthography and its application in Tagalog further on future posts.

Modern Tagalog othography

This orthographical system is the one used in Tagalog and almost all Philippine-languages today. As mentioned a previously, the modern Tagalog orthography is very phonemic. It uses the following alphabet. Its pronunciation is to be explained in future posts.

A B K D E G H I L M N Ng O P R S T U W Y

An “-” (en dash) is used the separate syllables and repeating syllables. Like in ilang-ilang and araw-araw. This is so that they will be pronounced as /i-lang-i-lang/ not /i-la-ngi-lang/, and /a-raw-a-raw/ not /a-ra-wa-raw/. “E” is never used in native Tagalog words, except for babae, and are only used on foreign-derived ones like presidente and eroplano. “O” is only used in the last syllable like in Tagalog and Tulong, and it becomes “u” whenever it is no longer in the last syllable like in Katagalugan and Tulungan. “D” becomes “r” when between two vowels like dugo → marugo, dagdag → mararagdagan, dumi → marumi; although this rule has many exceptions. And also “ng” becomes “n” when before “l”, “r”, “s”, and “t” while it becomes “m” before “b” and “p”; examples are pang + tao → pantao, taong + bayan → taumbayan. That rule is in order to achieve euphony (something that makes words easier to pronounce); although this rule mainly applies to Tagalog only and not to other Philippine languages which are also using the modern Tagalog orthography, like Cebuano.

Posted by felipeaira at 16:25:00 | permalink

Previous Comments

Sa mga wika sa bansa bago pa man dumating ang mga kanluranin ay may “e” at o” na tunog sa ating bansa kahit “F”,”V”,”J”"Z”,cha”..at iba pa..na sa katunayan ay di lang dapat tingnan ang abakada ng tagalog kundi ang mga salita na may ganitong tunog.
At siguro kung Baybayin Script ang gagamitin ay marami siguro ang medyo maiiba ng paraan ng pagsulat at paggamit ng mga titik.

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