Take note that there were quite a number of indigenous Filipino scripts used to write a number of languages in Philippines before the Spanish colonial era. Now, you can even download a Baybayin font for your computer. It has even become somewhat of fashion trend, with lots of young people getting tattoos in Baybayin. Enthusiasts have been promoting this way of writing Tagalog as a way to call back to our “original” Filipino culture. Lately however, there has been quite a resurgence of Baybayin. It maybe fun to learn, though most Filipinos won’t have a clue on how to write a single letter of Baybayin, though they have have remembered seeing it in school. The Hail Mary prayer in Tagalog in Latin script and in Baybayin (1593) Wikicommons Sourceĭon’t worry if you don’t learn it, if your goal is communicate with Filipinos. (Read: Are Tagalog and Spanish similar?) Part of this was the introduction of Latin letters to write the Tagalog (like our English alphabet). After all, they stayed as Philippine colonists for three centuries. Of course, the Spanish colonizers heavily changed the culture, so much so that it has heavily-influenced Tagalog in deep way. Some people also refer this script as “Alibata” but it’s more correct to describe it as “Baybayin” as the former was a newer word coined by an academic based on an erroneous assumption it is an Arabic based script. (I’m using the word “Tagalog” here, since there was no “Filipino” yet. Baybayin, the Pre-Hispanic Scriptīefore the arrival of the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, some native Tagalog-speaking societies used Baybayin. Okay, hop into your time machine and let’s go. Or at least two that fell out of disuse, and one that’s used 99.999998% of the time.

Well, to understand it, we might even say that Filipino has three alphabets. (Read: How to use Tagalog vs Filipino vs Pilipino and More!) Uhmm… What’s the difference between Tagalog and Filipino? In a nutshell, Tagalog is what the language is called in everyday life, and for an academic setting, you might want to call it Tagalog. I’d even say it’s more appropriate to call the language “Filipino” here, because we’re talking about the language academically. You’ll be surprised that the Tagalog, or should I say Filipino, has its own alphabet. Long time learners or the language might tell you it doesn’t. Does Tagalog have its own alphabet? Or, does Tagalog have the same alphabet as the English alphabet?

Abakada alphabet