TheAbakada alphabet was an "indigenized"Latin alphabet adopted for theTagalog-basedWikang Pambansa (nowFilipino) in 1939.[1]
The alphabet, which contains 20letters, was introduced in the grammar book developed byLope K. Santos for the newly designated national language based on Tagalog.[2] It was officially adopted by the thenInstitute of National Language (Filipino:Surian ng Wikang Pambansa) and theNational Commission on Culture and the Arts (Filipino:Pambasang Komission Para sa Kultura at mga Pambasa).[3]
The alphabet has since been superseded by the adoption of theFilipino alphabet (with an additional eight letters and repositioning of the letter K) in 1987.
The collation of letters in the Abakada alphabet closely follows that of otherLatin alphabets, besides the digraphNg being inserted afterN and the placement ofK
When enumerating each consonant, it is always pronounced with an ⟨-a⟩ suffix (i.e., "ba", "ka", etc.). This is also the basis for the alphabet's nomenclature.
| Majuscule forms (also calleduppercase orcapital letters) | |||||||||||||||||||
| A | B | K | D | E | G | H | I | L | M | N | Ng | O | P | R | S | T | U | W | Y |
| Minuscule forms (also calledlowercase orsmall letters) | |||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | k | d | e | g | h | i | l | m | n | ng | o | p | r | s | t | u | w | y |
During thepre-Hispanic era,Old Tagalog was written using theKawi or theBaybayin script.For three centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules.
Dr.José Rizal was one of several proponents (includingTrinidad Pardo de Tavera) of reforming the orthographies of the various Philippine languages in the late 19th-century. Like other proponents, he suggested to "indigenize" the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the lettersC andQ withK.[4] Initially, these reforms were not broadly adopted when they were proposed but gradually became popular into the early 20th century.
Following the establishment of thePhilippine Commonwealth in 1935, the government selected Tagalog as basis for a "national language" (i.e. Filipino). Following this, the development of a dictionary and grammar book for this "national language" started. In 1939, Lope K. Santos developed theAng Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa (The Grammar of the National Language) which, apart from containing grammar rules, contained the 20-letter alphabet designated asAbakada.
The Abakada was replaced in 1976 with an expanded alphabet containing an additional 11 letters (C, CH, F, J, LL, Ñ, Q, RR, V, X, and Z) which was in turn replaced with the current 28-letter modern alphabet. At present, alllanguages of the Philippines may be written using the modernFilipino alphabet (officially adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada.