'Toy napigket nga daga
Pitpitenmi nga umuna
Danggayanmi't kankanta
Takkiagmi a napigsa
Kettang ken bannogmi
dikam igingina 

     Mannamili
     Ilokano Folk Song

Ma. Sheila Zamar
 

ABSTRACT

            The Philippines has roughly 110 distinct languages. Ten of these are considered major languages by virtue of their having a million or more native speakers all together comprising more than 50% of the total population. One of these major languages, Tagalog, is the basis of the national language called Filipino, a variety of Tagalog spoken in urban areas, taught in Philippine schools and widely used by the mass media. It is also the national lingua franca or common language in communities whose members are native speakers of different languages. Two other major languages play an important role as regional lingua francas: Ilokano in Northern Luzon; and Cebuano in the Visayas and Mindanao. Given these circumstances, the average educated Filipino outside the Tagalog area is at least quadrilingual, speaking their own vernacular (local language), the regional lingua franca, the national lingua franca, and English, one of the two official languages (along with Filipino) used in Philippine schools, government and business transactions and the mass media. This situation is bound to give rise to a complex sociolinguistic arena where community members have no choice but to develop a multilingual linguistic repertoire in order to actively participate in various social domains. This paper will describe the Filipino verbal repertoire in today's complex multilingual Philippine society and look at how our understanding of this phenomenon might inform language policy making and teaching.

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Maria Sheila Zamar is an Instructor of Filipino at UH-Manoa's Department of Hawaiian and Indo-Pacific Languages. She received her BA in Linguistics from the University of the Philippines and her MA in English from Northern Illinois University. She is working on her PhD in Linguistics at UH-Manoa. Currently, she is the president of the Hawaii Association of Language Teachers (HALT).

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