Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

174 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

vernacular language that might be proposed to fill the wellfelt necessity of a national language?
Recent scientific classifications, based upon the actual number of ethnical groups more or less complete, and more or less
different that are found scattered in the diverse regions of the
Archipelago, certify the existence of more than forty linguistic 4
varieties some of which may be called more or less improperly
languages, and other dialects. We say this with some exceptions, because we are among those who affirm that all vernaculars spoken in the whole country without distinction as to
language or dialect are branches of only two or more tongues.
We have demonstrated this fact in a philologic essay which
we read before the "Academia de Artes y Letras" of the University of the Philippines in December, 1925, entitled "Analogia Estructural entre las Lenguas Filipinas" or "Structural
Analogy among the Filipino Languages."
Limiting ourselves now to the speeches which-having a more
or less extensive literature or being spoken by a more or less
numerous group of Filipinos-have been called languages, we
may say without fear of making mistakes that even these same
languages, well-analyzed, are no more than mere dialects of a
real mother-tongue. Which is this mother tongue? Is it some
of the languages which have taken root in this same Philippine soil or others which existed and still exists in the great
isles of Malaysia or in the great Indian continent?.These are
questions which need specific replies but has never been definitely
answered.
The languages: Visayan, Tagalog, Iloco, Bicol, Pampango,
Pangasinan, Ibanag and Magindanao, leaving out the others
of less importance, represent the eight principal ones from which
may be based the study of the feasibility of a "lengua franca"
for all the Filipinos.
A careful computation of words and an analytic comparison
of the grammatical forms lead necessarily to the conclusion that i
'these eight languages are only one language. The relations
among themselves are almost equidistant. The Visayan is to
the Tagalog, as the Tagalog is to the Iloco; the three dialects
of the Visayan are in themselves as the Pampango and the