Filipino and Tagalog: How similar, how different, or really just one language with two names?

THE national language of the Philippines is Filipino, according to the 1987 Constitution. When one hears Filipino being spoken, however, it sounds almost exactly like Tagalog. In fact, one may possibly wonder what is being heard: Is it Filipino? Or is it Tagalog? When the Spanish came to colonize the Philippines, there existed no language named "Filipino." In the first report given to then-US president William McKinley by the First Philippine Commission to describe the situation in the new colony at the beginning of the 20th century, 84 tribes were listed as existing in the country, and the following have the highest numbers: Visayans (2,601,600), Tagalogs (1,663,900), Bicols (518,800), Ilocanos (441,700), Pangasinans (365,500), Pampangas (337,900). It seems to me these corresponded to the ethnolinguistic groupings in the Philippines, with the label "Visayans" possibly including Cebuano and the other Visayan languages. It was President Manuel Quezon, as he was preparing the country for independence, who came up with the idea of a national language in 1936 and set up the National Language Institute (NLI) to "make a study of the Philippine dialects in general for the purpose of evolving and adopting a common national language based on one of the existing native tongues." The institute eventually recommended Tagalog as the basis of the Philippine national language by the following year, and President Quezon endorsed Tagalog as such.

Expectedly, this was not well-received by non-Tagalogs, and a court case was in fact filed alleging the NLI's deception when it renamed the national language as "Pilipino" when it is in fact Tagalog all the same. What ensued is what has been called the period of "national language wars" in the Philippines. And so the 1973 Constitution ordered, "(2) The Batasang Pambansa shall take steps toward the development and formal adoption of a common national language to be known as Filipino. (3) Until otherwise provided by law, English and Pilipino shall be the official languages." Notice that Filipino was referred to as being developed in (2) while Pilipino was already existing in (3). It could be interpreted that Filipino and Pilipino are two different languages, based on the 1973 Constitution. The tumultuous years leading to the 1987 Constitution and the clamor for national unity probably led the people not to question the stipulation of Filipino as the national language in the Constitution. The Constitution also assumes the language has reached the level of development desired in previous Constitutions because, in 1987, it was simply stated that it "shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages." I emphasize "further developed" and I read it to mean that there is already a desirable point of development achieved at that moment in time.