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There is more than thirty Eskimo words for ice, but there is no Tagalog word for ice except when Filipinos borrowed Spanish words, yelo and nuwebe. This could be explained by the fact that Eskimos are in a natural climate that is abundant in ice or snow, whereas the Filipinos live in the Philippines where the climate is too warm to have ice as a common commodity before modern technologies became available. By studying the language of a community, their history could be revealed since it is not possible to create a word that did not serve an essential part of their experience.

In the Philippines, there are many words for rice. "Sinaing" means cooked rice, "bigas" is uncooked rice, "sinangag" is the rice cooked with sauteed garlic, "tutong" is burnt rice. Due to the many words used for many forms of rice (compared to the English in which there is no other word for rice), it could be inferred that it served an important role as a staple food for the Filipinos.

People create words to name the things that have importance to their community. For alcoholic beverages, "tuba" is the wine from coconut, "lambanog" is also from the coconut (but the specialty of the province Quezon), and "basi" is the sugar wine popular in Ilocos. In the woldlife, "butanting" is the whale shark, "balmag" is tarsier and "banoy" is the Philippine Eagle. From these words, we could see the culture of drinking and also the nature or environment of the Philippine nation.

We could also get a glimpse of the social system from the names of the people. The "umalokohan" is the one goes around the village to announce a news (umalokohan is an old word that is no longer used since there is no more need for such person due to changes of political system and technolgy), "datu" is the tribal chief, "maharlika" are the blue-blooded or royalties, "babaylan" is the female priest and healer (somwhere in the Visayas or Mindanao region), and "mumbaki" is the faith healer of the Ifugao. From these words, we see the social classes and the history of the political system of the ancestral Filipino community.

Language imparts the history of community, where the laguage came from. As a representative of communal history, the language also reflects its value system. Using the word "saysay" from the word "kasaysayan" (history), we could learn that Filipinos consider history as "a meanigful or important message." If importance is given to the underlying concepts within the language, it could be realized that besides revealing the history, language also expresses the manner in which people interpret and give importance to some things.

"Panahon" means both weather and time; therefore, it could be implied that Filipinos consider weather as temporal as it changes with the passing of time.

The word "katarungan" (justice) is derived from the Cebuano term "tarong", which means straight, and "tuwid" (straight) is the root word of "katuwiran" (reason). It could also be noted that a person with "baluktot ang katuwiran" (twisted reasoning) is someone who forces something wrong to be right. Therefore, it could be implied that the ancestral Filipinos perceive justice as being reasonable or in the right path. If we compare it to the English "justice" from the rootword "just", it could be observed that their vision of justice is primarily about equality according to a certain standard (if you do further research, you may found out that just is closely related to law). From this example, it is clear that each language carries with it a ceratin values system.

In the English language, patriarchy could be observed by the use of "he" or "she" to distinguish the sex of the third person. In Tagalog, however, no gender distinctions are made for the third person pronoun, "siya". This shows the equal opportunities and importance were given to both male and female during the precolonial period. (Females were even allowed to be priest, "babaylan" as mentioned earlier.)

Through the language, the history of a community is revealed because of the communal memories and values system that the language expresses.

Thanks. I thought no one bothers to read my essay until I read your reply.

In French the words for "time" and "weather" are the same too. ;o

I wonder what that's about?

I heard the Tagalog dialect (my dad said this is a dialect and that their are about 500 dialects of Filipino or so)
has 50 words for a pineapple.

Thanks i learned a lot and isn't the word shoe in tagalog the same as in spanish

my stepmums friend was talking in her native language to her relative over the phone in tagalog. when she finished talking my stepmums friends husband asked my stepmum if she understood his wife just then.
what surprised me was that she said only a little.[before then i never knew there were different "tagalog"] according to different areas of philippines.
especially when it comes to the city and province [well that's what my stepmum told me]

You're a few months late...