FOR the last few weeks, we have been talking about the phenomenal spread of English around the world and the emergence of a new field of research called 'world Englishes.' In the coming weeks, we shall look closely at English in the Philippines and how it has evolved to become the localized variety called 'Philippine English.' To be able to fully understand English language use in the Philippines, it is imperative to also have a good grasp of the language situation in the country. And so, in today's column, we shall look into the language situation in the Philippines prior to the American colonization of the country.

Even before the Spaniards colonized the Philippines in the 16th century, the country was already a multilingual one. I have no exact information as to how many languages were spoken in the country at that time, but if the Philippines has close to 200 hundred languages at present, it is possible that it would have had roughly the same number at that time. Of course, some languages with very few speakers must have disappeared along the way, and a few new languages could have been born.