The Abakada alphabet was an "indigenized"

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

adopted for the Tagalog-based Filipino national language in 1940. The alphabet, which contains 20

letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

, was introduced in the grammar book developed by

Lope K. Santos Lope K. Santos (born Lope Santos y Canseco, September 25, 1879 – May 1, 1963) was a Filipino Tagalog-language writer and former senator of the Philippines. He is best known for his 1906 socialist novel, '' Banaag at Sikat'' and to his contrib ...

for the newly-designated national language based on Tagalog. The alphabet was officially adopted by the Institute of National Language ( fil, Surián ng Wikang Pambansâ). The Abakada alphabet has since been superseded by the modern Filipino alphabet adopted in 1987.

Order/collation of the Abakada

The collation of letters in the Abakada closely follows those of other Latin-based spelling systems, with the digraph ''ng'' inserted after ''n''. When spelling or naming each consonant, its sound is always pronounced with an "a" at the end (e.g. "ba", "ka", etc). This is also the reason for the system’s name.

History

During the pre-Hispanic era, Old Tagalog was written using the Kawi or the

Baybayin (, ''pre-kudlít'': , ''virama-krus-kudlít'': , ''virama-pamudpod'': ; also formerly commonly incorrectly known as alibata) is a Philippine script. The script is an abugida belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. Geographically, it ...

script. For three centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules. Dr.

José Rizal José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (, ; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered the national he ...

was one of several proponents (including Trinidad Pardo de Tavera) of reforming the orthographies of the various Philippine languages in the late 19th-century. Like other proponents, he suggested to "indigenize" the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the letters ''C'' and ''Q'' with ''K''. Initially, these reforms were not broadly adopted when they were proposed but gradually became popular into the early 20th century. Following the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, the government selected Tagalog as basis for a "national language" (i.e. Filipino). Following this, the development of a dictionary and grammar book for this "national language" started. In 1939, Lope K. Santos developed the ''Ang Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa'' (The Grammar of the National Language) which, apart from containing grammar rules, contained the 20-letter alphabet designated as ''Abakada''. The Abakada was replaced in 1976 with an expanded alphabet containing an additional 11 letters (C, CH, F, J, LL, Ñ, Q, RR, V, X, and Z) which was in turn replaced with the current 28-letter modern alphabet. At present, all

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 C ...

may be written using the modern Filipino alphabet (officially adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abakada alphabet Latin alphabets Orthographies by language Filipino language Tagalog language Cebuano language Hiligaynon language Ilocano language 1940 introductions 1940 in the Philippines

Order/collation of the Abakada

History

See also

References