Are Tagalog and Filipino the Same? Fil-Am Actor Nico Santos Got Twitter Curious

(SPOT.ph) Are Filipino and Tagalog the same? Twitter users revived the debate on language after Filipino-American comedian Nico Santos shared a conversation that spawned searches on Google.

Santos, who played Oliver T'sien in Crazy Rich Asians and Mateo Liwanag in Superstore, said that for a voice dubbing gig, he was asked if he could speak Filipino. He answered by saying that he speaks Tagalog.

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"I was up for a voice dubbing gig and told them 'yes I speak Tagalog' then heard back and they said 'oh we’re not dubbing in Tagalog, we’re dubbing in Filipino. Do you speak Filipino?' LOL WUT?" he said in a tweet.

"Y’all I get that there’s technically a difference but when I was growing up in the Philippines we didn’t say I speak Filipino, we said I speak Tagalog because it specified what dialect you knew. Since Filipino was based on Tagalog the terms were used interchangeably," he said as he apologized thinking this was common knowledge among foreigners.

"Now if they asked me to dub it in Ilocano or Kapampangan I would be screwed", he added.

"Teka, teka, teka... ANO DAW?!?" asked Broadway legend Lea Salonga, to which he answered, "di ko nga ma gets eh!!!"

She-Hulk actress Ginger Gonzaga, who also has Filipino roots, chimed in and said "SMH I'm still dead."

Which is it: Filipino or Tagalog?

Before Santos delivers his signature "tarantado" to anyone who dares to further confuse him, let's break down the difference between the two.

According to the 1987 Constitution, the national language of the Philippines is Filipino. This gives its citizens a common language to understand each other despite having native languages, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino said in its book Madalas Itanong Hinggil sa Wikang Pambansa.

Tagalog is one of the major languages spoken in the Philippines. It is usually spoken in Luzon, particularly the Tagalog areas: Metro Manila, parts of Central Luzon, and Southern Tagalog.

Tagalog was also the native language selected as the basis of the national language according to the 1935 Constitution. Tagalog was the term used to refer to the national language until 1959, when Jose Romero, as education secretary, declared that the national language should be called Pilipino.

Pilipino was declared the national language at that time because it uses words from other native languages apart from Tagalog, according to the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino.

In the 1972 Constitution, the term Filipino was first used to refer to the national language in the Philippines.

"The national language of the Philippines is Filipino. As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages," it said in Article XIV Section 6 of the 1987 Constitution.

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Filipino is broader than Tagalog

While the two share the same roots, Filipino is broader than Tagalog, Roy Rene Cagalingan, KWF senior language researcher, told GMA News.

For example, lungsod, which is Filipino for city, has a Cebuano origin. Katarungan, which is Filipino for justice, stemmed from the Cebuano word "tarong" which means straight.

Filipino also borrowed and adopted words from Spanish and American English, linguistics professor Jessie Grace Rubrico said in The Metamorphosis of Filipino as National Language.  It's a legacy of the country's colonial history -- Spain for 333 years and the U.S. for 48 years.

The modern Filipino language borrows terms "almost exclusively" from the English language, which could be because of Filipinos' exposure to high technology and media which uses English as its main medium of communication, said Rubrico.

Ask yourself what the translation is for the word department. Is it kagawaran (Tagalog) or departamento (Filipino)? Do you also use konsiderasyon, a respelled form of the English word consideration, or kategorya, or category in English?

Filipino and Tagalog share common lexicon and grammatical structures, making them mutually intelligible, Cornell University's Department of Asian Studies said.

"But with more languages contributing to Filipino, language experts predict that at some point in the future, Filipino and Tagalog will split up and become truly separate languages," it said.