Infogate Philippines

The People 

Ethnic composition 

The people of the Philippines are called Filipinos. Today "Pinoy" has become a popular term to refer to Filipinos. Their ancestors, who were of Malay stock, came from the southeastern Asian mainland as well as from what is now Indonesia. From the 10th century, contacts with China resulted in a group of mixed Filipino-Chinese descent, who account for a minority of the population. A small percentage of Chinese nationals also live in the country. Spanish-Filipinos and Filipino-Americans may be distinguished by their fairer complexion, taller stature, and aquiline nose structure. The relatively small numbers of emigrants from the Indian subcontinent added to the population's racial mixture. There are small numbers of resident U.S. nationals  and Spaniards. The aboriginal inhabitants of the islands were the Negritos, also called Aetas or Balugas; they now constitute only a small percentage of the total population.

The Philippines, like the Southeast Asia region generally, is quite diverse in both its ethnic and linguistic makeup. All of the approximately 90 indigenous languages and dialects belong to the Austronesian, or Malayo-Polynesian, family of languages. Only eight of these languages have more than one million speakers each. The more prominent languages and the percentages of the population speaking them are: Tagalog, in its standardized form known as Pilipino (30 percent); Cebuano (24 percent); Ilocano (10 percent); Hiligaynon, or Ilongo (9 percent); Bicol (6 percent); Waray-Waray, or Samar-Leyte (4 percent); Pampangan (3 percent); and Pangasinan (2 percent). Sambal is spoken in Zambales and some portions of Pangasinan. Persons who speak one of these eight languages as a mother tongue make up nearly 90 percent of the population.

This diversity of languages, together with the introduction of an alien schooling system during the American colonial period, facilitated the adoption of English as the major secondary language. English is the most widely spoken single language and is the medium of instruction in schools throughout the nation. Pilipino and English were designated the two official
languages in 1962. "Taglish" or a combination of Tagalog and English has become popular in the Philippines, being the informal  spoken language. New vocabularies are added every now and then. These are often introduced by the new generation.

Other minor nonnative languages include Chinese and Spanish. Chinese is spoken by the Chinese minority that resides mainly in the cities. Visitors to the islands often assume that Spanish is widely spoken because of the long era of colonial rule by Spain. However, Spanish is spoken today by less than one percent of the people mostly members of the old aristocracy in the cities or on the sugar plantations on Negros and Panay islands