Modern Filipino Spelling

The Modern Filipino Alphabet is the official standard for writing in the Philippines. Understanding it requires knowing five main things:

• The Letters: The 28-letter alphabet consists of 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 23 consonants. It includes A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, NG, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z.
• The 'Foreign' and Indigenous Letters: The 8 added letters (C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, and Z) are used for proper nouns (e.g., Quezon), scientific terms, and new loanwords. Crucially, letters like F, J, V, and Z also represent sounds found in other native Philippine languages (like Ivatan or Ibanag). For older, integrated words, we usually use phonetic respelling (e.g., kuryente instead of corriente). Specifically, C becomes K or S (e.g., cama becomes kama, cedula becomes sedula), Q becomes K for Spanish loans (e.g., queso becomes keso) or KW for English loans (e.g., quarter becomes kwarter), and X becomes KS (e.g., taxi becomes taksi). Similarly, in older Spanish loans, F became P (e.g., fiesta becomes piyesta), V became B (e.g., vaso becomes baso), J became H (e.g., caja becomes kaha), and Z became S (e.g., zapatos becomes sapatos). The actual letters C, Q, and X are generally reserved for proper nouns or unassimilated technical terms. For Ñ, common nouns borrowed from Spanish are almost always respelled with 'ny' (e.g., baño becomes banyo, piña becomes pinya), while the actual letter Ñ is generally restricted to proper nouns.
• The NG Digraph: The letter NG is a single unit representing the velar nasal sound /ŋ/ (like the 'ng' in 'singer'). Authoritative modern Filipino dictionaries (like the UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino) strictly treat NG as a single, distinct letter, giving it a dedicated section placed after N and Ñ. Because NG is a single consonant, it cannot be split across syllables (e.g., pangalan is syllabicated as pa-nga-lan, never pan-ga-lan).
• The Glottal Stop (Impit): Although it is a core consonant sound in the language, the glottal stop does not have a dedicated letter in the 28-letter alphabet. Instead, it is often unwritten when it occurs naturally between two adjacent vowels (e.g., oo, babae, paa). It is also represented by a hyphen within a word specifically when a prefix ending in a consonant is attached to a root word starting with a vowel (e.g., pag-asa, tag-araw, pang-ulo), or by a diacritic mark over the final vowel (e.g., batà).
• The Schwa (ë): Recognized in the 2013 Ortograpiyang Pambansa, the letter ë is used to represent the schwa sound. Because standard Tagalog does not naturally use the schwa sound, this letter is highly specialized for words from other indigenous Philippine languages, such as Ilocano and Mëranaw.

This system is a bridge between traditional Tagalog roots and the modern, globalized reality of the Philippines. While the letters are named using English pronunciations (ey, bi, si...), the Ñ is called enye and NG is officially called en-ji (unlike the older Abakada name nga).