Tagalog and Cebuano are the most commonly spoken native languages, together comprising about half of the population of the Philippines. Additionally, the Arabic script is used in the Muslim areas in the southern Philippines. Baybayin, though generally not understood, is one of the most well-known of the Philippine indigenous scripts and is used mainly in artistic applications such as on the Philippine banknotes, where the word "Pilipino" is inscribed using the writing system. The indigenous scripts of the Philippines (such as the Kulitan, Tagbanwa and others) are used very little instead, Philippine languages are today written in the Latin script because of the Spanish and American colonial experience. Some of these regional languages are also used in education. The other regional languages are given official auxiliary status in their respective places according to the constitution but particular languages are not specified. Including second-language speakers, there are more speakers of Filipino than English in the Philippines. While Filipino is used for communication across the country's diverse linguistic groups and in popular culture, the government operates mostly using English. On October 30, 2018, President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law Republic Act 11106, which declares Filipino Sign Language or FSL to be the country's official sign language and as the Philippine government's official language in communicating with the Filipino Deaf. Filipino is regulated by Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino and serves as a lingua franca used by Filipinos of various ethnolinguistic backgrounds. The 1987 constitution designates Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, as the national language and an official language along with English.
A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties generally called Chavacano are also spoken in certain communities. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages native to the archipelago.
There are some 120 to 187 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification.