Introduction

Tagalog is one of the top twelve non-English languages spoken at home by people over the age of 5 in the USA (US Census 2000a). Ranking third in the list, with more than 1.4 million speakers, it also ranks second to Chinese among Asian languages spoken in the USA. Tagalog has experienced an increase of over 45 percent in its population from 1990 to 2000, and an increase of another 21 percent from 2000 to 2007. This can be attributed mainly to the immigration of Filipinos who speak Tagalog, either as a first or second language. On a global scale, including the US Census, the Filipino language is primarily referred to as Tagalog. Therefore Tagalog is the term that will be used in this chapter, and the terms Filipino(s) or Tagalogs will refer to the people who speak the language.

Of the 171 languages spoken across the Philippine islands (Gordon 2005), Tagalog is the most widely spoken. Campbell (1995) estimates that there are approximately 20 million speakers of Tagalog as a first language around the world, and around 43 million who speak it as a second language. In the 1987 Philippine Constitution, Article XIV (Education, Science and Technology, Arts, Culture, and Sports) establishes “Filipino,” a Tagalog-based language, as the national language, and Filipino and English as the official languages of the Philippines. Hence, every Filipino who is educated up to at least primary level may be assumed to have been taught in or exposed to the Tagalog language.