Presentation - ECV2024-564

Children’s speech development: Tagalog/Filipino

Ivan Paul BONDOC, University of Toronto, Canada (ivan.bondoc@utoronto.ca)
Rowena GARCIA, University of Potsdam, Germany (garcia1@uni-potsdam.de)
Ferdiliza Dandah S. GARCIA, University of the Philippines Manila, Philippines (fsgarcia2@up.edu.ph)

Tagalog is one the major languages of the Philippines and is spoken in more than 40 other countries. Its dialects include Manila, Bataan, Batangas, Bulacan, Lubang, Marinduque, Puray, Tanay-Paete, and Tayabas. Tagalog is characterized by 16 consonants, 5 vowels, and 8 diphthongs. Eight additional letters and consonant clusters occur in loan words from Spanish and English. Contemporary Tagalog uses a writing system using Roman alphabets which has twenty letters. Tagalog does not use tones to differentiate meaning. There are currently only few studies of children’s acquisition of Tagalog, and they demonstrate that Tagalog-speaking children have acquired most of the phonemes and exhibit few phonological errors when they reach four years of age. Researchers have focused on typically developing children and children with cleft lip and palate. Most common speech assessments include non-standardized picture articulation tests and connected speech sampling; and there is currently no intervention which is specific for Tagalog.

Key words: 
Tagalog, Filipino, multilingual, communication, speech, language, children’s development, interdisciplinary, international communities, assessment, intervention

Book chapter:
Bondoc, I. P., Garcia, R., & Garcia, F. D. S. (2025). Tagalog speech development. In S. McLeod (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of speech development in languages of the world. Oxford University Press.

Language overview presentation:

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

Scroll to Top