The language of the Philippines was originally written in the Baybayin script, which in turn is similar to those used in Java, Bali and Sumatra. (For those not so familiar with these languages, they date back to the Brahmi inscriptions in India in the third century BC).
Today, the Latin alphabet has replaced the previous one and is the means by which we write Tagalog, the common name for the language of the Philippines, although not exactly the same since Filipino is a variant of Tagalog. Tagalog means “resident beside the river.”
In the Philippines, due to a history of multiple settlements, more than 170 languages are spoken and only 2 of them are official in the country: Filipino and English.