Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Filipino Language (Tagalog) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Wikang Filipino is the national language of a country with well over a hundred living languages, and its story is full of arguments: which tongue to build it on, what to call it (Tagalog, Wikang Pambansa, Pilipino, Filipino), whether to let in C, F and Ñ, and how many weeks of August to spend celebrating it. These 50 trivia questions about Filipino language cover the history and the mechanics. You will meet Manuel L. Quezon and his December 30, 1937 order, Lope K. Santos's 20-letter Abakada, the seven-member Institute of National Language, the 1959 rename to Pilipino, the 1987 Constitution, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino and the ISO code 'fil'. Then the language itself: the 17 letters of Baybayin and the kudlit that changes a vowel, the markers ng and mga, Spanish and Hokkien loanwords, pitó versus siyete, the Laguna Copperplate and the Doctrina Christiana of 1593, Taglish, and the words English borrowed back — boondocks, jeepney, yaya. Easy questions stay with Buwan ng Wika and the two official languages; the hardest ask about Pablo Clain's dictionary and the krus-kudlit of 1620. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. Use it for a Buwan ng Wika quiz bee, a Filipino class, or a trivia night with a Philippine twist — play online or print it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Filipino is a standardized form of which Philippine language?
Tagalog
It is the form spoken and written in Metro Manila and other urban centres.
Q 02In the 1948 census, roughly what share of Filipinos spoke the national language?
37%
Nearly half of those seven million speakers had learnt it as a second language.
Q 03Which constitution mandates that Filipino be enriched by the other languages of the Philippines?
1987
It also names Filipino the national language and, with English, an official language.
Q 04How many living languages originate in the Philippines, by one count cited for the country?
175
Ethnologue counts 182 native languages, four of them extinct.
Q 05Most Philippine languages descend from a Malayo-Polynesian ancestor tied to migration from where?
Taiwan
Through Malay they picked up words originating in Sanskrit, Hokkien, Arabic and Japanese.
Q 06The first Tagalog dictionary, the Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, was published in which year?
1613
It was printed by Tomás Pinpin, the 'Father of Filipino Printing', in Pila, Laguna.
Q 07Paul Klein, who wrote an early 18th-century Tagalog dictionary, was a Jesuit from which country?
Czech lands
Known locally as Pablo Clain, he spoke Tagalog and used it in several books.
Q 08Which president proclaimed Tagalog the basis of the national language on December 30, 1937?
Manuel L. Quezon
He was born in Baler, Aurora, a native Tagalog-speaking area.
Q 09Commonwealth Act No. 184 of 1936 created which body, later called the Surián ng Wikang Pambansâ?
Institute of National Language
Later known as the Surián ng Wikang Pambansâ, it studied each native language before choosing.
Q 10Who chaired the seven-member body that chose the base language in 1937, representing Samar-Leyte?
Jaime C. De Veyra
Cecilio Lopez represented the Tagalogs and Hadji Butu the languages of Muslim Filipinos.
Q 11Which grammarian's 1940 Balarílà introduced the 20-letter Abakada?
Lope K. Santos
Every consonant in the Abakada is named with an -a suffix: ba, ka, da.
Q 12In 1959 the national language was renamed what, to distance it from one ethnic group?
Pilipino
Education Secretary José E. Romero made the change; many Cebuanos still did not accept it.
Q 13Congressman Geruncio Lacuesta's anti-purist movement promoted what he called a 'Manila' what?
Lingua franca
His MOLAM movement wanted a 32-letter alphabet and an end to respelling loanwords.
Q 21Which president extended Language Week to a full month in 1997?
Fidel V. Ramos
Proclamation 1041 of July 15 renamed it Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa.
Q 22In 2007 KWF chair Ricardo Nolasco said Filipino's grammar was simply that of which language?
Tagalog
He argued that was contrary to RA 7104's requirement to enrich it from other Philippine languages.
Q 23The word 'Tagalista' is used in language debates to label people who promote what?
The primacy of Tagalog
Literally it just means a Tagalog specialist.
Q 14Which 1991 law created the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino?
Republic Act No. 7104
The KWF reports directly to the President and superseded the Institute of Philippine Languages.
Q 15What ISO 639-2 code did Filipino receive in 2004?
fil
It was registered by an Ateneo de Manila student, Martin Gomez.
Q 16In 2007, trial courts in which Bulacan city began using Filipino instead of English?
Malolos
Twelve stenographers trained at Bulacan State University for the pilot.
Q 17Buwan ng Wika, the national language celebration, is held in which month?
August
It coincides with the birth month of Manuel L. Quezon, the 'Ama ng Wikang Pambansa'.
Q 18Before 1997, how long did the national language celebration last?
A week
It was called Linggo ng Wika and ran from August 13 to 19.
Q 19The original 1946 Language Week ended on April 2, the birthday of which Tagalog writer?
Francisco Baltazar
He wrote the Tagalog epic Florante at Laura.
Q 20Why did Ramon Magsaysay move Language Week out of March-April in 1955?
Schools were on break
The new dates, August 13-19, ended on Quezon's birthday.
Q 24Tagalog belongs to which language family?
Austronesian
Its relatives include Malay, Malagasy, Hawaiian and Māori.
Q 25The name Tagalog is thought to come from taga-ilog, meaning what?
River dweller
An alternative derivation is taga-alog, from a word for a lowland pool of water.
Q 26What is the first known complete book written in Tagalog, printed in 1593?
Doctrina Christiana
It gave the Tagalog text twice: in Baybayin and in an early Latin spelling.
Q 27Old Tagalog words may appear in which 10th-century artefact, written mostly in Old Malay?
Laguna Copperplate Inscription
It is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.
Q 28Tagalog was first declared official in 1897 by the charter of which revolutionary republic?
Biak-na-Bato
That was 1897; the 1899 Malolos Constitution effectively made Spanish official instead.
Q 29How many phonemes does Tagalog have?
21
Sixteen are consonants and five are vowels.
Q 30Native Tagalog words typically follow which syllable structure?
CV(C)
More complex consonant clusters turn up only in loanwords.