This nation is a collection of islands northeast of Borneo(2), south of Taiwan, and north of the Sangihe Islands(3), and separating the South China Sea to its west from the Philippine Sea to its east. The group is mostly aligned north to south, though slightly westward. However there are two southwestward extensions, which--with Sabah on Borneo--surround the Sulu Sea. The more northerly extension is dominated by Palawan island, while the more southerly by the Zamboanga Peninsula of Mindanao island plus the Sulu Archipelago.
Of the north-south main group, the northernmost large island is Luzon(4), while the southernmost large island is Mindanao(5). Between them are numerous smaller--but still large--islands, and three seas. The Sibuyan Sea is surrounded by Luzon north and northeast, Masbate southeast, Panay south and Mindoro northwest. The Visayan(6) Sea is surrounded by Masbate north, Leyte southeast, Cebu south, Negros southwest and Panay northwest. And the Bohol Sea is surrounded by Leyte north, Mindanao south, and Bohol northwest. Samar, the last of the large islands, does not mark off any of the three seas since it lies southeast of Luzon's Bicol Peninsula, and east of Masbate and northern Leyte.
All of the islands are mountainous, with the only big lowlands on Luzon, Mindanao, Panay and Negros. Coasts ae otherwise steep, giving way to interior plateaus. Some islands have fringing coral reefs. Some of the moutains are active volcanoes, like Pinatubo that erupted in 1991.
Almost everyone--more than 98 percent--speak a Western Malayo-Polynesian language as their birth tongue, though more than half also use English. Among the Malayo-Polynesian groups two are locally prominent: the Meso-Philippine languages--accounting for almost three-fourths of the nation--and the Northern Philippine ones--adding to almost one-fifth of Philipinos.
Ilocano is the chief Northern Philippine language, spoken in northwestern Luzon. The Meso-Philippine languages include Bikol(7), Tagalog and the Bisayan group. Bikol is spoken on Luzon's Bikol peninsula(8), nicknamed Bicolandia. It accounts for about one in twenty Philipinos. Tagalog(9) is spoken as a first language in southern Luzon and Mindoro--accounting for more than one in four speakers. It is the current national language, known by three-fourths of Philipinos.The Bisayan group includes Cebuano and the Central Bisayan Group. Cebuano is spoken on Cebu, Bohol(10), southeastern Masbate, much of Leyte, and southern and eastern Negros; it accounts for about 22 percent of Philipinos.
The Central Bisayan group includes Hiligaynon, spoken on northwestern Negros, northeastern Panay, Guimaras (between Panay and Negros) and the southwestern-pointing peninsula of Masbate.
More than eight in ten Philipinos practice Roman Catholic Christianity. Perhaps as many as six percent belong to the Philippine Independent Church, a Christian offshoot of Roman Catholicism popularly known as the Aglipayan Church after its founder.(11) About one in twenty--generally in Mindanao--are Sunni Moslems. Protestant Christians probably are fewer than that, depending on whose count is used.
Manila is the nation's capital and center of a giant metropolitan area.
Davao, on the Davao Gulf on the south coast of Mindanao, has a metropolitan area of more than a million. It has suffered from recent Moslem terrorist attacks.
Cebu, on the east center of Cebu island, also has a metropolitan area exceeding one million. It is the site of the first Christian religious service on the island, celebrated annually in a week-long festival.
The linguistic evidence is that all the peoples--upland and lowland--share the languages that arrived around the same time from Taiwan.(12) These Proto-Malay-Indonesians spread south from the Batan Islands (north of Luzon) and continued on south beyond the Philippines. The Western Malay-Indonesian languages evolved from their descendents in the Philippines and beyond.
Many groups--chiefly the Chinese(13) and the Spanish--have intermarried(14)--into the original population, creating the current range of looks, and leaving a racial prejudice against uplanders who were not as blended a people.
Writing arrived from the south--probably from the Celebes(15). Elsewhere Indic writing systems spread with Buddhism (or a blend of Buddhism and Hinduism), but--if that happened in the Philippines all traces of it are gone.
Islam arrived--also from what is now Indonesia--about 1400. Sultans established themselves in the Sulu Archipelago and practiced piracy and enslaved Bisayans.(16)
Roman Catholic Christianity arrived a century later, conquering most of the current nation, and taking some of the Moslem ports. Christianity converted all the non-Moslems, except some interior uplanders, but the Catholic version of it suffered setbacks due to the Pope's alliance with colonial rule. Gregorio Aglipaya founded his anti-papal church as a nationalist response in 1902. It in turn suffered setbacks under American colonialism. The new imperial masters confiscated Aglipayan Church properties and handed them to Catholics.
Along with Catholicism, the Spanish introduced their language. While there are now only a few tens of thousands of native speakers, plus less than a million creole speakers, the languages impact was vast: an estimated 25 percent of words in Bisayan languages were borrwed from Spanish.
American colonialism began about the beginning of the 20th century and ended about 50 years later.(17) It brought the English language and Protestantism. This branch of Christianity made inroads on the Aglipayan Church, and converted the isolated upland groups.
north(1) Officially Pilipinas. Here it does not include the Spratley Islands.
(2) Officially Kalimantan in Indonesia.
(3) Kepulauan means islands in Malay/ Indonesian.
(4) Asia's seventh largest.
(5) Asia's eighth largest.
(6) Or Bisayan.
(7) Sometimes considered several languages.
(8) Also on Cataduanes islands to the peninsula's east.
(9) Officially called Pilipino.
(10) Some consider the Boholano dialect a separate language.
(11) Both local Roman Catholicism and the Aglipayan church include veneration of political elites who are deemed by some to have magical powers. This is a vestige of earlier animism.
(12) Several thousand years ago. There were of course already people on the islands. Much local attention is given to "racial" distinctions between uplanders and lowlanders, with the former said to be indiginous. I've ignored the distinction, partly due to my distaste for, and suspicion of, human categorizations that appear focused on skin tone. Whatever the reality of the physical distinction, all Philipinos--save obvious immigrants like the Chinese--share a common linguistic heritage.
(13) The Chinese have been arriving for centuries.
(14) Sometimes the union was concubinage.
(15) Sulawesi in Malay/ Indonesian.
(16) The southerners word for slave was derived from the word Bisayan.
(17) Japanese colonialism had an enormous political impact, but left language and religion untouched.