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Originally Posted by Ian
Thanks Ron.
Very helpful information on that site. So the Tagbanua people are animists who happened to have lived under the Brunei Sultanate for a few hundred years, as well as enduring Western rule from the Spanish and Americans.
Seems an interesting group. One of the curiosities, at least to me, of language distributions in the Philippines today is that the main language on Palawan is Tagalog. Now Tagalog is the language of the major group on Luzon, but it is a fair distance from Luzon to Palawan, and parts of the Visayas are in between. When I ask locals why Tagalog is spoken on Palawan, they simply say it is part of the Tagalog Region. Anyone have a more specific answer?
Ian.
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This is simply due to migration from parts of the Philippines with high population densities to areas with lower ones, resulting in the natives of those regions being reduced to minorities, and eventually, assimilated. This isnt something unique to Palawan. The large island of Mindoro, which lies between Palawan and the Tagalog speaking areas of Luzon has shared the same fate. Much of Mindanao has been turned into a Visayan "lebensraum" and Cebuano is now the lingua franca of much of the region. Similarly, the Ilocanos have spread out from their core Ilocos region and have Ilocanized most of northern Luzon.
Palawan has a lot of native languages, Tagbanwa is not the only one. There is also the Palawan language, as well as other tribal tongues. Interestingly, the Tagbanwa are amongst the few peoples of the Philippines who continue to use native writing systems of Brahmi (Sanskrit alphabet) origin.
I think in a couple of generations, we are going to see a drastic reduction in the number of languages and ethnic groups in the Philippines.