This is the plenary lecture I will be delivering today at the 8th Linguistic Society of the Philippines International Conference being held at the West Visayas State University, Iloilo City.
THE Philippines has long lived with language as both a resource and a burden. Few countries debate language as persistently — or as publicly — as we do. Which language belongs to the nation? Which language does the nation belong to? And which language should carry its future?
These are not new questions. But in the 21st century, they demand to be asked again — this time with greater honesty.
We often treat language issues in isolation: Filipino versus English, mother tongue education or the fate of regional languages. Yet these are not separate debates. They are part of a larger, unfinished project — nation-building. And unless we begin to see them as such, our policies will continue to drift, contradictory and incomplete.
One of the most useful ways to understand the Philippine situation comes from the classic distinction made by Joshua Fishman between nationalism and nationism. Nationalism is emotional: it ties language to identity, history and belonging — the “language of the heart.” Nationism, by contrast, is pragmatic: it asks which language allows the state to function effectively — the “language of wider communication.”
The Philippines has always stood between these two forces. Filipino has been positioned as the language of identity, while English has served as the language of governance, education and global participation. Decades ago, this was described as a “bilingual consensus.” But today, we must ask: Does this consensus still hold? And more importantly, does it still serve us?
What defines the Philippine linguistic condition today is not clarity, but ambivalence. We hold contradictory beliefs about our languages at the same time. We say English is foreign, yet we depend on it daily. We declare Filipino as the national language, yet many struggle to use it in formal or academic contexts. We celebrate our regional languages as cultural treasures, yet allow them to remain underfunded, under-documented and largely absent from institutional life.
This is not simply confusion. It is the lived reality of a multilingual, postcolonial nation. Consider Filipino. Officially, it is envisioned as a language drawing from all Philippine languages. In practice, it remains largely Tagalog-based, enriched by borrowings from English, Spanish and other languages. This gap between ideology and reality has long been recognized, yet rarely confronted directly. A more honest policy would begin by acknowledging Filipino for what it actually is — not what we wish it to be.
English presents a different kind of tension. It is often framed as a colonial imposition, yet it has been used, adapted and localized by Filipinos for over a century. Philippine English is now a well-documented variety, shaped by local linguistic patterns and cultural contexts. To continue treating English as purely foreign is to ignore this reality. It is, for all practical purposes, already a Philippine language.
But recognizing English as such does not mean abandoning Filipino — or any other language. The real question is not “English or Filipino?” It is: how do we develop all our linguistic resources in ways that serve national development?
Here, one issue stands out: the incomplete intellectualization of Filipino. A language becomes fully functional only when it can express complex ideas across disciplines — science, law, philosophy and beyond. Filipino has made progress, but it is not yet there. Scholars often struggle to deliver lectures or write research entirely in Filipino without resorting to English borrowings. This is not a failure of the language itself, but of sustained institutional investment.
Intellectualization is slow, expensive and politically unglamorous work. It requires coordinated efforts: terminology development, translation of key texts, teacher training and consistent use in academic settings. Without this, Filipino will remain symbolically central but functionally limited.
At the same time, we must confront the reality of linguistic inequality. The Philippines is home to nearly 200 languages, many of which are spoken by small and vulnerable communities. When policy debates focus almost exclusively on Filipino and English, these languages are pushed further to the margins.
The repeal of mother tongue-based multilingual education has intensified this concern. While implementation challenges were real, its removal also eliminated a structural recognition of linguistic diversity in education. Partial accommodations that support only a subset of languages risk deepening inequality rather than addressing it.
What, then, is the way forward? First, we must abandon the illusion of a monolingual nation. The Philippines is — and will remain — multilingual. Policy must reflect this reality, not resist it.
Second, we must adopt a genuinely multilingual vision anchored in both Filipino and English. These two languages need not compete. Filipino can serve as a language of identity and national cohesion, while English provides access to global knowledge and opportunity. Both can — and must — be developed alongside the country’s many other languages. Third, investment must be sustained. Language policy cannot operate in cycles of reform and reversal. Whether in intellectualizing Filipino, supporting minority languages or improving language education, progress requires long-term commitment. Finally, we must confront the gap between advocacy and practice. It is not enough to defend languages in principle. The real work lies in documentation, curriculum development, teacher training and institutional implementation — the slow, often invisible labor that makes language policy meaningful.
So, where, really, are we Filipinos today? We are in a moment of contradiction. Between aspiration and reality. Between ideology and practice. Between the languages we celebrate and those we neglect. But this is not a failure. It is the natural condition of a linguistically complex nation navigating its place in a globalized world. The question is not whether we have made mistakes — we have. The question is whether we are willing to learn from them. A nation, indeed, must cherish its language. But in the Philippines, this cannot mean a single language alone. It must mean recognizing and cultivating the full richness of our linguistic inheritance — not as a problem to be managed, but as a resource for building a more inclusive and prosperous future.
Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is a public intellectual, language scholar and migrant advocate. He is one of the leading researchers on English in the Philippines and one of the pioneers of migration linguistics. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at age 23, from De La Salle University, and has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland and Singapore. He is currently associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
