ABSTRACT
In the Philippines, the selection of the local language to be made the basis of the national and official language was a matter of controversy for quite some time, because the number of Bisayans was larger than that of Tagalogs at the time of the National Language Law of 1936. Although Tagalog was chosen by the National Language Institute to be the basis of the national language in 1937, its acceptance was a problem for the next thirty-five years; it was standardized and disseminated in the schools and, after the Second World War, the mass media. The 1973 Constitution had in effect disowned the choice of Tagalog as the basis of the national language in favour of an as yet to be formed language called 'Filipino' . However, by the 1987 Constitution, the matter had been settled, since there was little controversy during the deliberations and hearings of the committee in charge of this article of the proposed constitution. The national language of the Philippines was to be Filipino and, as described by the committee members, it was to be Tagalog-based Filipino with lexical enrichment from all the languages of the Philippines and other languages too (presumably Spanish, English, Arabic and others).
