Filipino language

Filipino is the standard register of the Tagalog language and the national language of the Philippines, sharing official status with the English language. As of 2007, Tagalog is the first language of 28 million people, or about one-third of the Philippine population, while 45 million speak Filipino as their second language. Filipino is among the 185 languages of the Philippines identified in the Ethnologue. Officially, Filipino is defined by the Commission on the Filipino Language (KWF) as "the native language, spoken and written, in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region, and in other urban centers of the archipelago." Filipino is ideally a pluricentric language. Indeed, there have been observed "emerging varieties of Filipino which deviate from the grammatical properties of Tagalog" in Davao City and Cebu, which together with Metro Manila form the three largest metropolitan areas in the Philippines. In reality, however, Filipino has been variously described as "simply Tagalog in syntax and grammar, with no grammatical element or lexicon coming from ... other major Philippine languages," and as "essentially a formalized version of Tagalog." In most contexts, Filipino is understood to be an alternative name for Tagalog, or the Metro Manila dialect of Tagalog.