Philippine Malay (21st Century Crisis)

Philippine Malay, officially registered as Bahasa Philippines ("Philippine language") and less commonly as Melayu Filipina, is the national standardized register of the Malay language in the Philippines. Prior to the Spanish colonization, Malay was the lingua franca of the archipelago, just like its southern neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia.

The language went into development by linguists from the southern Philippines, particularly Mindanao. Eventually, the language gained interest among Filipino and pan-Malayan nationalists in the Philippines, who preferred Malay alongside Filipino, over Spanish or English. In 2012, then-president Gilbert Teodoro standardized the Malay language as the third official language of the Philippines.

Further developments went to create a dialect of Malay unique to the Philippines, as had been done in Indonesia. In 2015, it was revealed that a "Bahasa Philippines" was underway, to join its two other counterparts - Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia. It was purposely named, "Bahasa Philippines", meaning "Philippine language" in order to distinguish it from Filipino, the national register of Tagalog. Others had suggested switching to designation of "Filipino" to the national Malay dialect, instead of Tagalog.

Philippine Malay contains a 70% cognates with its Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts. It contains heavy influences from Old Malay, as well as Sanskrit, Spanish and indigenous Philippine languages such as Tagalog, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Tausūg, Maguindanaon and Kapampangan. Since the Philippines is a Roman Catholic nation, Philippine Malay lacks Arabic loanwords commonly found in other Malay dialects. Instead, Philippine Malay uses original Old Malay and words of Sanskrit and Indic origin to fill the absence of Arabic words.

On July 15, 2016, president Rodrigo Duterte announced the national officiating of the Philippines' unique dialect of Malay, replacing Standard Malay as the third official language of the Philippines.