I am a bit confused how Pinoys use the word dialect. Dialect in the science of linguistic means a slight variation in the same language. For example British English and American English are two dialects of the same language- it means slightly different grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation but it is English nonetheless.
A dialect must be "of something".
For example in Butuan and Cebu they speak Cebuano but there si a slightly different vocabulary. Same in Leyte. So , one can say that Leyte people speak a different dialect of Cebuano from Butuan people.
However Cebuano, Tagalog and Ilocano are not dialects; they are languages- they have their own literature and TV stations and newspapers and are generally not understood by other speakers.
Vernacular is a regional variation of a dialect- as in different parts of a big city people may have a slightly different vocabulary and pronuncuation.
I think that the Spaniards humiliated the natives by not seeing the local languages as of their own right and simply calling them "dialectos", but they are not.
I keep seeing quite educated people here and at work ( I work with highly educated Pinoys) that make that mistake all the time.
Is this information news to you? If not, how many languages are spoken in RP, vs. How many dialects?
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yup. it really was a misnomer when people started classifying the different languages in the philippines as dialects.
Well I'm partly a Batangenyo, partly from Pangasinan and Partly from manila (mostly Batangas) and some others, but I speak the regular Tagalog dialect. The tagalog accent in manila is just a normal one. There are words in the other dialects you mentioned that aren't in the Manila (the main Tagalog) dialect. I don't know who Mommy dionisio is, or Gerard Anderson. I was born in the Philippines, and I still know as much Tagalog now as i did when i lived there, but I've forgotten some words I used to know in the Batangenyo dialect. I barley have an american accent when I speak tagalog though, because just about 95% of the time, at home, I speak Tagalog to my mom and dad. Just to tell you, no, "i" is not mostly pronounced like "e". but yes, we do speak in a very solid accent most of the time. I'd know!
"In Philippines there are over 170 languages, almost all of them belong to the Austronesian language family. Of all of these languages, only 2 are considered official in the country, at least 10 are considered major and at least 8 are considered co-official.
The present constitution, ratified in 1987, stated that Filipino and English are both the official languages of the country. The Constitution of the Philippines provides for the use of the vernacular languages as auxiliary languages in provinces where Filipino is not the lingua franca. This is however not implemented as Filipinos at large would be polyglots. In the case where the vernacular language is a regional language, Filipinos would speak in Filipino when speaking in formal situations while the regional languages are spoken in non-formal settings.
There are 13 native languages with at least one million native speakers: Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, Bikol, Albay Bikol, Pangasinan, Maranao, Maguindanao, Kinaray-a, and Tausug. One or more of these is spoken natively by more than 90% of the population."