I am from the Philippines and, next month we are going to celebrate the National Language Month. My country is comprised of 7,107 islands and of about 150 different languages. I say languages and not dialects because a dialect means a variety of the same language that in one way or another two speakers of different varieties of a certain language can still understand each other. Whereas languages is like comparing Japanese and Chinese whose speakers will not understand each other no matter what. And that is exactly what is going on in our country.
Based on the law of the Philippines, whatever a Filipino speaker's native language is among the 150 languages available, his/her second language will always be English. This is the reason English is considered as one of the two official languages of the Philippines together with Tagalog which has the most number of speakers visavis other languages.
Please click here for more interesting facts about our national language.
Comments
Wikipedia says there are some 120 to 175 languages in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. That's a huge number! I didn't know that.
It's a very nice idea to celebrate national language month. In my opinion, each and every language spoken in the world should be preserved.
Amazing - so many languages in your country.
Some people argue that we should try to protect the languages that fewer people speak.
Interesting. Never know that you have so many languages.
Hi, Ohnie! I'm fine. Thanks for asking. How about you? How's life? And how's your lovely child?