User:Candiesrgood/Sandbox III/Han language

Filipino ([ˌfɪl.ɪˈpiː.no]; Pilipino [ˌpɪl.ɪˈpiː.no] or Wikang Filipino) is the national language of the Philippines and is designated, along with English, as an official language of the country.[4] It is the standard register of the Tagalog language,[5] an Austronesian, regional language that is widely spoken in the Philippines. As of 2007, Tagalog is the first language of 28 million people,[6] or about one-third of the Philippine population, while 45 million speak Filipino as their second language.[1] Filipino is among the 185 languages of the Philippines identified in the Ethnologue.[7] Officially, Filipino is defined by the Commission on the Filipino Language (Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino in Filipino or simply KWF) as "the native language, spoken and written, in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region, and in other urban centers of the archipelago."[8] Filipino is ideally a pluricentric language.[9] Indeed, there have been observed "emerging varieties of Filipino which deviate from the grammatical properties of Tagalog" in Cebu,[10] Davao City and Iloilo[11] which together with Metro Manila form the three largest metropolitan areas in the Philippines. In reality, however, Filipino has been variously described as "simply Tagalog in syntax and grammar, with no grammatical element or lexicon coming from ... other major Philippine languages,"[12] and as "essentially a formalized version of Tagalog."[13] In most contexts, Filipino is understood to be an alternative name for Tagalog,[14][15] or the Metro Manila dialect of Tagalog.[16][17][18]