Institute of National Language

Also known as: Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (the Filipino name, abbreviated SWP) · Institute of Philippine Languages (the post-1987 renaming under Executive Order No. 117) · Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas (the Filipino name of the renamed institute, as identified in Republic Act No. 7104) · The National Language Institute (a rendering used in English-language accounts)

Society

Definition

The Institute of National Language (Filipino: Surian ng Wikang Pambansa) was the Commonwealth-era agency created by Commonwealth Act No. 184, approved on November 13, 1936, and charged with studying the native languages of the Philippines and selecting one of them as the basis of the national language. President Manuel L. Quezon — whose language policy is treated in this site’s entry on him — appointed the Institute’s members on January 12, 1937: a chairman, Jaime C. de Veyra, representing the Waray-speaking provinces, together with members drawn from the major language communities — Santiago A. Fonacier (Ilocano), Filemon Sotto (Cebuano), Casimiro Perfecto (Bikol), Felix S. Sales Rodriguez (Hiligaynon), Hadji Butu (the Moro provinces), and Cecilio Lopez (Tagalog, member and secretary). (Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Wikipedia — Filipino language)

The Institute’s work produced the founding decision of Philippine language policy: on November 9, 1937 it resolved to recommend Tagalog as the basis, and on December 30, 1937 Quezon issued Executive Order No. 134, approving the adoption of Tagalog as the basis of the national language, with effect two years from promulgation. The Institute became a continuing body — preparing the grammar and dictionary of the new national language and supervising its introduction into the schools — and its institutional line runs through the postwar decades to its renaming as the Institute of Philippine Languages (the Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas) under Executive Order No. 117 of January 30, 1987, and its supersession by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino created by Republic Act No. 7104 on August 14, 1991. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	N/A
Wikidata	N/A
DBpedia	N/A
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	Institute of National Language (Philippines)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Institute+of+National+Language%22+%22Surian+ng+Wikang+Pambansa%22+Tagalog+national+language+Quezon
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (the Filipino name, abbreviated SWP)
Institute of Philippine Languages (the post-1987 renaming under Executive Order No. 117)
Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas (the Filipino name of the renamed institute, as identified in Republic Act No. 7104)
The National Language Institute (a rendering used in English-language accounts)

Examples and Analogies

A jury of languages: the Institute was deliberately composed like a jury of the country’s speech communities — one member each for Waray, Ilocano, Cebuano, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Moro, and Tagalog — so that the selection of a national-language basis would carry the signature of all the major regions, not of one. (Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Wikipedia — Filipino language)
Selecting the trunk, not the tree: Executive Order No. 134 adopted Tagalog as the basis on which a national language would be developed — the Institute’s reasoned choice of a trunk (widely spoken and understood, “not divided into smaller daughter languages,” the richest literary tradition, the language of Manila and of the Katipunan) rather than the imposition of a finished national language. (Wikipedia — Filipino language)
A relay of statutes: the agency’s history runs like a relay in which each runner passes the baton by statute — Commonwealth Act No. 184 creates the Institute (1936), Executive Order No. 134 fixes its selection (1937), Commonwealth Act No. 570 makes the language official upon independence (1940), Executive Order No. 117 renames the Institute (1987), and Republic Act No. 7104 replaces it with the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (1991). (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Legal Lineage of Filipino

Students of language policy reconstruct the chain from Commonwealth Act No. 184 (November 13, 1936) through Executive Order No. 134 (December 30, 1937), the school-year 1940–1941 mandate teaching the national language in the fourth year of all high schools, and Commonwealth Act No. 570 (June 7, 1940) declaring the national language official on July 4, 1946, down to the 1987 Constitution and Republic Act No. 7104 — the standard sequence cited in constitutional-law and language-planning literature. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)

2. Studying the Selection of Tagalog

Researchers examining why Tagalog was chosen weigh the Institute’s recorded reasons — wide comprehension across the regions, structural unity, literary richness, and the Katipunan inheritance — as stated in the selection record summarized in the standard references, treating the 1937 choice as a documented policy decision rather than an inevitability. (Wikipedia — Filipino language)

3. Researching the Institute’s Personnel and Successors

Historians of the institution follow its heads and its continuity: Jaime C. de Veyra, first head of the Institute from 1937 until 1944 in the account this site’s entry on him records; Lope K. Santos, appointed director by Quezon and serving until 1946, whose 1940 Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa grammar was commissioned by the Surian; Cecilio Lopez, the Tagalog member-secretary of the founding body; and Julian Cruz Balmaseda, remembered as a former director of the Institute in whose honour the KWF library is named. (Wikipedia — Jaime C. de Veyra, Wikipedia — Lope K. Santos, Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino)

Strategies

Anchor every claim to its statute or executive order: the Institute’s biography exists in legal instruments — Commonwealth Act No. 184, Executive Order No. 134, Commonwealth Act No. 570, Executive Order No. 117, Republic Act No. 7104 — so researchers cite the instrument rather than paraphrase. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)
Distinguish the Institute from its successors in name and date: the Institute of National Language (1936–1987), the Institute of Philippine Languages / Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas (1987–1991), and the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (1991– ) are three legal persons; conflating them misdates every attribution. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)
Keep the selection and the adoption distinct: the Institute’s recommendation (its November 9, 1937 resolution) and the President’s adoption (Executive Order No. 134 of December 30, 1937) are two acts by two authorities on two dates — the discipline required of any account of 1937. (Wikipedia — Filipino language)
Follow the institutional file through the site’s related entries: the Quezon presidency that created the Institute, the de Veyra biography that records its first headship, and the constitutional documents of 1935 and 1987 that bracket its history.

Security and Safety Measures

Statutory continuity as the safeguard of the national language: the replacement of the Institute was effected by statute with express transfer provisions — Republic Act No. 7104’s Section 16 abolished the Institute of Philippine Languages “upon the organization of the Commission,” transferring its personnel, records, assets, funds, and intellectual outputs with the “least disruption of ongoing programs,” so that the institutional memory of the 1936 body survived into its successor. (Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)
Constitutional entrenchment: the 1987 Constitution’s language provisions, under which the Commission operates, place the national-language policy beyond casual administrative alteration, requiring for each change the same statutory form that created the Institute. (Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino)
Preservation of the linguistic record: the Institute’s foundational scholarly outputs — the grammar and dictionary it prepared for the Tagalog-based national language, including Santos’s Balarila of 1940 — remain the citable record of the standardization work, preserved by its successor institutions. (Wikipedia — Lope K. Santos, Wikipedia — Filipino language)

Historical Context

The Institute was born of a constitutional mandate. The 1935 Constitution directed the National Assembly to “take steps toward the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages,” and the first National Assembly answered with Commonwealth Act No. 184, approved November 13, 1936, creating the Institute of National Language. Quezon appointed its members on January 12, 1937 — the chairman Jaime C. de Veyra, whose biography this site records from his Leyte and Washington years to his Manila professorship — and the Institute made its study and its selection in 1937. Executive Order No. 134 of December 30, 1937 adopted Tagalog as the basis, its stated reasons being Tagalog’s wide comprehension, structural unity, literary tradition, metropolitan currency, and revolutionary pedigree. (Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Wikipedia — Filipino language, Wikipedia — Jaime C. de Veyra)

The 1940 measures converted the selection into policy: the teaching of the national language was set by law in the fourth year of all high schools, public and private, from school year 1940–1941, taught as a subject; Commonwealth Act No. 570 of June 7, 1940 declared the national language one of the official languages effective July 4, 1946, the expected date of independence; and the Institute’s commissioned grammar, Lope K. Santos’s Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa (1940), fixed the twenty-letter Abakada orthography in the standard accounts of the national language’s standardization. Santos later served as director of the Surian, his appointment by Quezon recorded in his biography, until 1946. (Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Wikipedia — Filipino language, Wikipedia — Lope K. Santos)

The postwar evolution renamed and reconstituted the agency twice. The language was renamed Pilipino by the Department of Education in 1959; the 1973 Constitution directed the development and formal adoption of a common national language to be known as Filipino; and the 1987 Constitution designated Filipino — further enriched “on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages” — as the national language. Institutionally, Executive Order No. 117 of January 30, 1987 renamed the Institute of National Language as the Institute of Philippine Languages, and Republic Act No. 7104 of August 14, 1991 created the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino in its place, an eleven-member commission representing the major Philippine languages, directly under the Office of the President. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil)

Challenges and Controversies

The Choice of Tagalog

The selection of Tagalog as the basis has been the recurring controversy of Philippine language politics: the Institute’s own composition — one member per major language community — registered the regional stakes, and the standardization that followed (the Balarila, the Abakada, the 1959 renaming to Pilipino, the eventual constitutional shift to Filipino) is narrated in the scholarly record as a continuing negotiation between a Tagalog basis and a plurilingual national reality. (Wikipedia — Filipino language, Wikipedia — Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino)

Institutional Identity Across Renamings

Because the 1936 Institute, the 1987 Institute of Philippine Languages, and the 1991 Komisyon are legally distinct, attributions of the mid-century work (the dictionaries, the teaching mandates, the directors’ tenures) are frequently misdated in secondary literature — a hazard researchers manage by citing the enabling instrument for each act rather than the institution’s name alone. (Republic Act No. 7104 — LawPhil, Wikipedia — Filipino language)

Dating the First Headship

The received accounts agree that de Veyra headed the Institute from 1937 until 1944 and that Santos, appointed by Quezon, served until 1946; the secondary literature does not fully reconcile the boundary years between the two tenures in wartime Manila, so precise dating of the handover is best treated as an open bibliographic question rather than asserted. (Wikipedia — Jaime C. de Veyra, Wikipedia — Lope K. Santos)