For decades, government and academe in the Philippines have championed the cause of Filipino — often interchangeably called Tagalog — as the national and intellectual language. Billions of pesos have been spent on its promotion. Educational reforms have mandated its use. Institutions have held conferences, coined new words, and created elaborate glossaries. And yet, for all the ceremony and lip service, one fact remains stubbornly obvious: Filipino has not — and perhaps cannot — break through as a truly academic, global, or world-class intellectual language. Why?
Because, simply put, Tagalog is a cumbersome language for formal, intellectual, or technical use. Anyone who has had to write an academic paper or deliver a scientific lecture in Filipino knows this. The words are often long, mechanical, or awkwardly constructed. The syntax favors redundancy over precision. The coinages — many of them manufactured by committees rather than by natural linguistic evolution — feel clunky and artificial.
Take, for instance, the government-approved Filipino translation of “facilitator" or "moderator”: “tagapagdaloy.” A five-syllable tongue-twister that literally means “facilitator of flow.” (as in a conference or seminar). No one uses it in real life unless required by a speech contest rubric. Or how about “salipawpaw” for “airplane” — a poetic but obscure word that only ever shows up in textbooks and bureaucratic signage, never in airport conversations. Even the everyday cellphone charger becomes “pantablay,” a coinage that sounds like an appliance brand, not a living word.
We can go on and on: website is "pook-sapot", email is "sulatroniko", mathematics is "sipnayan", dictionary is "talatinigan", web browser is "panginain", and microphone is "miktinig." These esoteric terms are the perfect symbols of why Filipino, despite its noble intentions, struggles to gain traction in real intellectual and cultural spaces.
In contrast, English—for all its colonial baggage—remains the language of science, law, medicine, international diplomacy, and even higher education in the Philippines. It allows for clarity, nuance, and brevity. It is the medium of instruction in our best universities, the default language of thesis writing, and the bridge to global knowledge. When Filipino is mandated for use in academic settings, what often happens is this: the speaker or writer thinks in English, outlines in English, and then translates awkwardly into Filipino — with mixed results. So why can’t we admit this?
Because doing so feels politically incorrect. Language is identity, nationalism, pride. To point out Filipino’s limitations is to risk being called unpatriotic, colonial-minded, or elitist. It is more comfortable—and safer—to pretend that the project of intelektwalisasyon ng wikang Filipino is succeeding, even when it is not. As a result, we continue the charade. We hold seminars in Filipino where the PowerPoint slides are written in English. We coin new terms that no one uses. We “develop” the language without really using it to develop ideas.
And still, Filipino has not emerged as a regional lingua franca (unlike Bahasa Indonesia or Malay), nor a literary powerhouse like Spanish, nor a diplomatic language like French. It remains largely confined to domestic entertainment, informal communication, and the echo chambers of state-funded institutions.
It is time to be honest. Filipino has not failed because it is inferior — but because the gap between its romanticized vision and its actual use has never been addressed. The language is weighed down by politics, artificial rules, and cultural insecurities. What it needs is not more tokenistic promotion, but genuine development — grounded in organic usage, literary excellence, and intellectual utility.
Until then, let us not vilify those who choose English as their tool of thought. They are not traitors to the Filipino soul. They are, more often than not, realists in a country that refuses to face linguistic truth.
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