During the
pre-Hispanic era,
Old Tagalog was written using the
Kawi or the
Baybayin script. For three centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules. Dr.
José Rizal 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 may be written using the modern
Filipino alphabet (officially adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada. ==See also==