Final Book Report
Final Book Report
Final Book Report
Ronald E. Donald, author of Philippines: a country side, this book was first published in
1993 as the fourth edition. On the very first chapter, it clarifies many different features about my
native-homeland, Philippines. It provides many important historical events and backgrounds that
give detailed assessments. On the next couple chapters, it presents the population, culture,
economy, armed forces and any other related topics. Those things can be the possible way to
In this book, I chose the topic about Philippines ethnicity and language. This topic is in
chapter 2 under the society and environment. The main point of this chapter is to explain the
background of Filipinos like their culture and religions. It was explained in this chapter that
people look at Muslims as a different group because of their cultural and religious background.
Filipinos have known to have different kinds of unique ethnicity for centuries. And some of
those ethnicity are Chinese, Spanish, Negrito and American. Negrito was known to be one of the
earliest people in Philippines. But Malay was the one who developed agricultural stage into a
well developed or advance period. Two major things happened when Malay spread throughout
the Archipelago, first, they absorbed into intermarriage and second, scattered into separate
groups. Also one of the countries who influenced Philippines was Spain. They succeeded in
providing a good identity to the Philippines, however they didn’t completely destroyed the
influence of Muslim (only 5% of the total population of the Philippines) in Mindanao. And some
other Muslim remained unaffected by Christians and set their own religion and way of life.
Eventhough, Spain didn’t succeed on their aspect; they still strongly influence those lowland
tribal groups. Philippine nationality was appeared as mixed of different linguistic and ethnic
groups. Muslims and Chinese were excluded by Christians because they haven’t absorbed the
rule of intermarriage.
In 1972, Muslim-Filipino (Moro) was recognized in many different places like Malaysia,
Indonesia, Libya and Middle East. Muslims are still deeply proud of their identities even though
they’ve been different and separated from other beliefs for hundred years. Moro structural
society was focused on a sultan (religious leader) who’s authorized by the Quaran.
Christians and Muslims were offered to be integrated into a better culture, so they would
be a normal Filipino who has their own religion and culture. But the Muslims disagree about it
because they think that this is just a simple and nicer way of asking them to assimilate. In spite of
that, Christians and Muslim-Filipinos are still clearly different from one another.
In the late 1980, there were 11 languages and 87 dialects in Philippines. Some of these
are; Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, and Bicolano. Tagalog is the national language of Filipinos. It
comes from the word “TAGA-ILOG” which means “native of”, “river”. In 1974, the government
organized a policy that Tagalog would be use in school, business and government instead of
English. In 1990 Late President Corazon Aquino direct that Tagalog should be use as
communication in all government offices even in 200 colleges. Now, government leaders hope