Abakada alphabet

The Abakada alphabet is an indigenized Latin alphabet of the Tagalog language of the Philippines. The alphabet, which contains 20 letters, was created by Lope K. Santos in 1940.^[1] The alphabet was officially adopted by the Institute of National Language (Filipino: Surian ng Wikang Pambansâ) for Filipino. See Filipino alphabet.

Order/Collation of the Abakada alphabet

History

During the Pre-Hispanic Era, Old Tagalog was written using the Kawi or the Baybayin script. Dr. José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, initially suggested to indigenize the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the letters C and Q with K.^[2] Based on Rizal's indigenization proposal, the Abakada became the alphabet for the Tagalog language.

At present, all languages of the Philippines may be written using the Modern Filipino alphabet, which includes all the letters of the Abakada alphabet.

Relationship of the Abakada alphabet to Baybayin script

The Baybayin script, featuring the equivalent of each of the 20 letters of the Abakada

Abakada is arranged this way. Inside the quotation marks are the names of the letters.

A – "A"

B – "Ba"

K – "Ka"

D – "Da"

E – "E"

G – "Ga"

H – "Ha"

I – "I"

L – "La"

M – "Ma"

N – "Na"

Ng – "Nga"

O – "O"

P – "Pa"

R – "Ra"

S – "Sa"

T – "Ta"

U – "U"

W – "Wa"

Y – "Ya"

See also

• Filipino alphabet
• Filipino orthography
• Baybayin
• Kawi script

References

1. ^ "Ebolusyon ng Alpabetong Filipino". http://wika.pbworks.com/Kasaysayan. Retrieved 2010-06-22. 
2. ^ Pangilinan, Michael Raymon. "Kapampángan or Capampáñgan: Settling the Dispute on the Kapampángan Romanized Orthography". http://www.silinternational.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers/pangilinan-Dispute%20on%20Orthography.pdf#search=%22siuala%22/. Retrieved 2010-06-21.