Philippines

Made up of more than seven thousand islands at a geographical crossroads between East Asia and the Pacific Ocean, the Philippine archipelago has historically been a zone of interaction between the world’s major civilizations (Western Christian Humanism, Islam and China) on an Austronesian substratum. Along with the major languages (Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, Bicolano, Pampangueño, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Ibatan, Waray-Waray, Hiligaynon, Tausug, Maguindanao, Manarao, Sama or Kannadai) and dozens of minority languages and variants, the Filipino built his faith in Latin and his nation in Spanish, while English has determined the modernity of the first Republic of Asia, currently with more than one hundred million people. The current national language, Filipino, is the twenty-fifth language in the world by number of speakers. Along with the two most widespread Western languages, the archipelago has a centuries-old relationship with the Arabic and Chinese languages, and newly created languages such as the Hispanic creole Chabacano, with two million speakers. This Babylonian scenario has made the Philippines a privileged laboratory of multilingualism, translation and cultural transmission in Asia, a cosmopolis between East and West and a theater of the global world.