There are more than 50 million speakers of Tagalog in the Philippines, mostly in the southern parts of Luzon, the archipelago’s largest island. Other dialects spoken in the Philippines include Cebuano, Ilokano, Waray-Waray, Hiligaynon, Pangasinan, Bikol, Maranao, Maguindanao, Tausug, and Kapampangan, but the official language, Filipino, is based on Tagalog. There are also significant numbers of Tagalog-speaking communities in other countries, with the largest in the United States where it ranks as the sixth most-spoken language.

Derived from “Taga-ilog,” which literally means “from the river,” Tagalog is an Austronesian language belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily, with outside influences from Malay and Chinese, and later from both Spanish and American English through four centuries of colonial rule. This influence is seen in Tagalog words and their spelling.