August 16, 2025

Buwan ng Wika (national language month)

August in the Philippines is National Language Month or Buwan ng Wika. To go with the occasion, here’s some art highlighting one of the national languages of the Philippines: Filipino Sign Language or FSL!

How to say eagle in Filipino Sign Language (and Sulat or Baybayin).

The Philippines has three official national languages: English, Filipino, and FSL. Every Buwan ng Wika I try to highlight FSL using all 3 languages. This year I made art highlighting the Visayan spotted deer, which can only be found on Panay and Negros. It shows the FSL for “deer”, which involves placing two open hands on your hand as if making a gesture of deer antlers. I also threw in the local word “usa” for deer, and wrote it with baybayin – an ancient writing system in the Philippines.

Usa or deer in Filipino Sign Language and Baybayin — How to say usa or deer in Filipino Sign Language (and Sulat or Baybayin). Get an artprint on Inprnt or printable at my Gumroad shop.

Visayan Spotted Deer Rusa alfredi male in the Bayawan Nature Reserve, Negros Island, Philippines. — A Visayan Spotted Deer *Rusa alfredi* in the forests of Negros. From “Confirmation of a population of the Visayan Spotted Deer Rusa alfredi in a forest fragment of the Southwest Negros KBA,” Matthew Ward et al, 2024.

It’s really difficult to show sign language with static 2D images, but as an illustrator I can’t help but try. At the very least I’d like to spread more awareness about FSL, which took several years to become recognized as the country’s official sign language. To this day issues regarding its proper implementation are on-going, such as the removal of its importance in the recent early childhood care act. Today Deaf leaders together with hearing allies and translators are working hard to ensure FSL can reach more and more people, deaf and hearing alike.

One of my latest FSL artworks involves a Filipino ingredient renowned for its flavor – calamansi juice. The FSL for calamansi juice involves the word for calamansi or lemon, followed by the word for juice. Communicating in FSL also includes facial expressions that help form certain words and phrases. Showing a sour face while signing “calamansi” is an integral part of the sign for it.

Calamansi juice in Filipino Sign Language and Baybayin. Get an artprint on Inprnt or printable at my Gumroad shop.

Evolution of our national languages

Spoken Filipino language

The roots of Buwan ng Wika lay in the popularization of Filipino. In the 1930s, a push for a national language called Filipino was made, with Tagalog chosen as the basis. A number of reasons were cited for this, many of them making sense in those days. One reason was the number of newspapers and books in Tagalog, though this was also because the Spanish center of power was in Manila. Coupled with a unanimous vote from various language representatives from different Philippine regions, and the 1st president of the Philippine commonwealth being a Tagalog speaker (and explicit supporter of choosing Tagalog), the sole language chosen as the basis for Filipino was Tagalog.

Fast forward to the new Philippine constitution in 1987, where the national language of Filipino was no longer associated with just one language by law. In fact, it opened Filipino to include other languages as well. Article XIV, section 6 of the constitution states, “The national language of the Philippines is Filipino. As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.”

Four years later in 1991, Republic Act 7104 started the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino or the KWF. To this day, this commission on the Filipino language is mandated to “promote the evolution, development and further enrichment of Filipino as the national language of the Philippines, on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.” The KWF is also the lead agency behind Buwan ng Wika.

Filipino Sign Language

Similary, Filipino Sign Language is seen as a “living language”, evolving over time. Sign language interpreter Jordan S. Madronio said in a DOST article, “Ang senyas nagbabago rin. Kaya kami, nagugulat na lang kami kahit alam na naming sumenyas; it’s a lifelong learning… Ibig sabihin lumalago kasi ginagamit… buhay ang lenggwahe ng senyas.”

(Sign language changes too. We get surprised even if we know how to do sign language; it’s a lifelong learning… it means it grows because it is being used… sign language is alive.)

Like the Filipino language as mandated in the constitution, Filipino Sign Language also involves the inclusion of other sign languages in the Philippines. Professor Liberty Notarte-Balanquit of UP Los Baños shares in this article that there is a “rich regional diversity” in FSL vocabulary and that it has been evolving since the 16th century in Leyte when Fr. Raymundo de Prado documented deaf people signing. Filipino Sign Language varieties include the Leyte Sign Language, a Samar Sign Language, as well as a Southern Luzon group that includes Bicol and Palawan Sign Languages.

The job of securing a language’s future

The question to whether Filipino and Filipino Sign Language actually derive from a diverse array of languages in the Philippines depends on the stewards of these languages. The debate continues regarding the aforementioned Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino or the KWF – how well are they managing and transmitting how Filipino languages evolve over time, which consists of over 170 Philippine languages? How well are they communicating this to the rest of the nation?

Meanwhile, 31 Philippine languages are listed as “threatened” at the UP Department of Linguistics. They include Ibatan spoken in Batanes and Kinamiging Manobo which is spoken in my dad’s home province of Camiguin – a language slowly being replaced with Cebuano. Meanwhile “nearly extinct” languages include Tagbanwa spoken in Palawan. Often my wife will remind me how less and less people are speaking Pangasinanse, a unique language spoken in Pangasinan other than Ilokano. Most of our nieces and nephews there only know English and Tagalog.

Regarding our sign languages, the Benilde School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies or SDEAS is the leading Philippine Deaf education institution producing deaf and hearing leader-advocates since 1991. Faculty and staff there continue their own research of FSL and conduct workshops nationwide, budget and resources permitting. They are also part of the network behind the push and passing of the Filipino Sign Language law, and teach Filipino Sign Language on and offline and offer classes every year.

The true stewards of any language are those who speak it, but institutions like the KWF in government and Deaf advocates like those at SDEAS still need all the help they can get.

Padayon (Bisaya), patuloy (Tagalog)… onward!