Abstract：The Philippines is a multi-ethnic and multilingual island country. After independence in 1946, the government of the Philippines enforced a series of language and language-education policies to manage the complex relationships among English (the colonial language), the Philippine Tagalog (the national language) and regional languages (mother tongues or dialects). These planning and policy endeavors were motivated by pragmatic ends of decolonialization, nation-building, and economic development. To improve learning outcomes and promote ‘Education For All’ (EFA), the Philippine government began to implement Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB MLE) programmes in 2009, when the government provided constant support for dialectal mother tongue education from policy formulation to implementation. This top-down approach becomes a typical case of language education policy making among Asian countries, and helps to shape the unique linguistic ecology of trilingualism in the Philippines. Most previous research on the language situation and language policy in the Philippines was conducted from the perspectives of language policy implementation, language comparison, language identity, and Chinese language education. This paper focuses on the trilingual formation and development in the Philippines, exploring the political, economic, and cultural factors underlying the changes in the Philippine language policies. The findings may be a reference for the post-colonial countries in Asia in their formulation of language and language education policies. This paper also arouses the reflection that a rational division of language functions is conducive to the formation of a multilingual and harmonious language ecology. And the countries should attach full importance to the economic value of language and language education and respect for citizens’ right to education in their mother tongue, and protect and promote the diversity of languages and cultures.
章石芳，范启华. 菲律宾三语关系演变与思考[J]. 语言战略研究, 2021, 6(2): 86-96.
Zhang Shifang and Fan Qihua. Trilingualism in the Philippines: Evolution and Reflections. , 2021, 6(2): 86-96.
