In 2009, the Department of Education of the Philippines released a directive to use the mother tongue as a medium of instruction from kindergarten to third grade. Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines pioneered the formal adaption of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE). However, the policy is beset with both structural…

English and Filipino (Tagalog) are the official languages of the Philippines. English is taught in schools and used as a medium of instruction as early as kindergarten. Because it was originally imposed by Western colonialism, its use in academia has been criticised as discriminatory to regional and indigenous languages other than Tagalog, which…

This paper maps out the linguistic history of nation-building in the Philippines through the politics of "p" and "f" in the country. This politics concerns the various strategic acts of naming the national language at different periods of the country's history that have shaped its fate as the most hegemonic indigenous…

Explores the implications of the divergence in the language of law, predominantly English, and the language of court proceedings, English and Filipino, for meeting the current social demands of Philippine society and for the future of the communication situation there. An interim solution to the dangers of the miscarriage of justice would be to…

Despite long-standing provisions in three Philippine constitutions naming Filipino as the national language, there has been no serious effort to implement the use of Pilipino in the Philippine educational system. Pilipino is based mainly on Tagalog, but is also a blend of words taken from English, Spanish, Arabic, Tamil, and Chinese. A 1973…

This article describes the shift from English to Filipino (Tagalog) as the language of instruction in elementary social studies education in the Philippines, focusing on the Philippines Department of Education's efforts to implement pre-service and in-service teacher training programs to expedite the change. In 1974 the Department of Education…

Describes the multilingual situation underlying the educational scheme in the Philippines, a system inherent with problems arising from the unequal developmental status of Filipino and English and the subsequent failure to meet manpower and material needs. The article issues a call to use the synergy created by two languages. Bajunid's response…

This paper considers how multilingualism is approached in both Japan and the United States by considering the position and roles of the government, schools, and public. There exists the perception in countries where monolingualism is considered the norm that bilingualism, and certainly multilingualism, are problematic. Multilingualism in a…