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ARCHAIC WRITING SYSTEM Compared to other Southeast Asia n countries, the Philippines has very few artifacts that show evidence of writing. However literacy was widespread in Luzon when the Spaniards came in 1571 with a script called Baybayin or Alibata . The Spaniards recorded that people in Manila and other places wrote on bamboo and specially prepared palm leaves using knives and styli. They were using the ancient Tagalog script which had 17 basic symbols, three of which were the vowels a, i, and u. Each basic consonantal symbol had the inherent a sound: ka, ga, nga, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, la, wa, sa, and ha. A Diacritical Mark called ''kudlit'' modified the sound of the symbol. The kudlit could be a dot, a short line, or even an arrowhead. When placed above the symbol, it changed the inherent sound of the symbol from a to i; placed below, the sound became u. Thus a ba with a kudlit placed above became a bi; if the kudlit was placed below, the symbol became a bu. COLONIAL LITERATURE (XVI-XVIII CENTURY) The arrival of the Spaniards in 1565 brought Spanish Culture and Language . The Spanish conquerors established a strict class system that was based on race and soon imposed Roman Catholicism on the native population. Augustinian and Franciscan missionaries, accompanied by Spanish soldiers soon spread Christianity from island to island. Their mission was made easier by the forced relocation of indigenous peoples during this time, as the uprooted natives turned to the foreign, structured religion as the new center of their lives. The priests and friars preached in local languages and employed indigenous peoples as Translator s, creating a bilingual class known as Ladino s. The natives, called 'indios,' generally were not taught Spanish, but the bilingual individuals, notably poet-translator Gaspar Aquino De Belen , produced devotional poetry written in the Roman script in the Tagalog language. Pasyon is a narrative of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ begun by Gaspar Aquino de Belen, which has circulated in many versions. Later, the Mexican ballads of chivalry, the corrido, provided a model for Secular literature. Verse narratives, or komedya, were performed in the Regional Language s for the illiterate majority. They were also written in the Roman alphabet in the principal languages and widely circulated. In the early seventeenth century a Tagalog printer, Tomas Pinpin , set out to write a book in romanized phonetic script to teach Tagalogs how to learn Castilian. His book, published by the Dominican press where he worked, appeared in 1610 , the same year as Blancas's arte . Unlike the missionary's grammar (which Pinpin had set in type), the Tagalog native's book dealt with the language of the dominant rather than the subordinate other. Pinpin's book was the first such work ever written and published by a Philippine native. As such, it is richly instructive for what it tells us about the interests that animated Tagalog translation and, by implication, Tagalog conversion in the early colonial period. Pinpin construed translation in ways that tended less to oppose than to elude the totalizing claims of Spanish signifying conventions. CLASSICAL LITERATURE (XIX CENTURY) Classical literature ( José Rizal , Pedro Paterno , Jesús Balmori, Huerta, Farolán, Licsi, Lumba, Castillo etc. ) and historical documents ( National Anthem , Constitución Política De Malolos ), were written in Spanish, which is no longer an official language. Nationalism was first propagated in the Spanish language, especially in the writings of Marcelo H. Del Pilar or 'Plaridel' in the La Solidaridad publications. In Cebu , 1886 , the first Spanish newspaper, El Boletin de Cebu, was published. MODERN LITERATURE (XX CENTURY) Ironically, a greater portion of Spanish literature by native Filipinos was written during the American commonwealth period because the Spanish language was still predominant for the Filipino intellectuals. One of the major Philippine writers, Claro Mayo Recto , continued writing in Spanish until 1946 . Other well known Spanish writers, especially during the American period were Isidro Marfori, Cecilio Apostol (Pentelicas, 1941), Fernando Ma. Guerrero (Crisalidas, 1914), Gaspar Aquino de Belen, Flavio Zaragoza Cano (Cantos a Espana and De Mactan a Tirad) and others. Among the newspapers published in Spanish were ''El Renacimiento'', ''La Democracia'', ''La Vanguardia'', ''El Pueblo de Iloilo'', ''El Tiempo'' and others. Three magazines, ''The Independent'', ''Philippine Free Press'' and ''Philippine Review'' were published in English and Spanish. In 1915, the local newspapers began publishing sections in English. Cebu had its share of writers in Spanish, most of whom wrote during the early decades of the century. Although their output would diminish in later years, Jose Del Mar won a Zobel prize for his work Perfiles in 1965. In Asian literature, Filipinos excel especially in short stories. Leon Comber, the former British publisher of Heinemann Writing in Asia Series and the head judge for the '' Asiaweek '' Short Story Competition commended the Filipino writers in his introduction to the book 'Prize Winning Asian Fiction', published by Times Book International, 1991. He said: "Many of the best short stories came from the Philippines... because Filipino writers felt at ease using English as a medium of expression. In fact, their country is the third largest English-speaking nation in the world and they take to writing in the language as a form of 'artistic expression' and show just as much zest and natural talent for it as they do for painting, music and the other arts." 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