tOS ox THE LAXGUAGES AND LITEUATUKE 



Manila, and two in Oton. Some of these are cur- 

 rent in several islands, but the most general are tlie 

 Til gala and Bisai/a, the last of which is very gross 

 and barbarous; but the other more refined and po- 

 lislied. The opinion of this missionary is confirmed 

 by Fra. Gaspar de San Augustin, who asserts, 

 that all these particular tongues are dialects of one 

 general language, in the same manner as the Attic, 

 Ionic, and jEoUc, are all dialects of Gre^k, or as th& 

 Italian, Spanish, Portugueze, and frenchy are all de- 

 rivatives from the Latin. 



The Tagala language has been cultivated only by 

 the Spanish missionaries. The Tagala grammar of 

 Fra. Caspar de San Augustin, which has passed 

 through two editions, was printed in 1703, an4 

 again in 1787. In his preface, he requests those 

 who are desirous of more numerous examples in the 

 language, to have recourse to other grammars, espe- 

 cially to that of Fra. Francisco de San Joseph, 

 who is elsewhere called the Demosthenes of the 

 Tagala language. A confessional, by the same au- 

 thor, in Spanish and Tagala, was publislied in 1713, 

 and republished witii the second edition of his 

 grammar. In 1627, Fra. Alphonso a St. Anna 

 pidjlished Ins " Edplicacion de la Doctjnna Christiana 

 en lingua Tugdla,'' and, besides these, many other re- 

 ligious compositions, both in prose and verse, have 

 been published by the missionaries. 



The Tagala alphabet consists of seventeen letters, 

 three of which are vowels, and fourteen consonants. 

 It is of the same class as the Biigis and Batta alpha- 

 bets, and resembles them much in form; and, it is 

 probably from some idea of this similarity, that 

 Fra. Caspar de San Augustin asserts that the 

 Tagala characters were derived from the Malays^. 



