1. What is Asian & Philippine Literature?

Literatures are writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays. Saying of a Literature as Asian means that the literary works originate and come from Asia, the biggest and largest continent on earth. On the other hand, saying Philippine Literature means that it came and originates from the Philippines, an asian country. Asian Literatures may be classified according to its area group- East, West or South Asian. Philippine literature is the literature associated with the Philippines and includes the legends of prehistory, and the colonial legacy of the Philippines, written in both Indigenous, and Hispanic languages. Most of the notable literature of the Philippines was written during the Spanish period. Philippine literature is written in Spanish, Tagalog, English, and other native Philippine languages. Compared to other Asian nations, the Philippine Islands has very few artifacts that show evidence of Asian writing. However, a script called Baybayin, was used in Luzon when the Spaniards settled the islands in 1521. The Spaniards recorded that Indigenous people in Manila, and among other native groups in the Philippines, wrote on bamboo, and specially prepared Arecaceae palm leaves, using knives, and styli. They were using the primitive Tagalog script which had basic symbols. These were the vowels a/e, i, and o/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 line, or even an arrowhead. When placed above the symbol, it changed the inherent sound of the symbol from a/e to i, placed below, the sound became o/u. Thus a ba/be with a kudlit placed above became a bi, if the kudlit was placed below, the symbol became a bo/bu.

2. What is your idea about Asian & Philippine Literature? For sure, these two literary, Asian & Philippine, come from the same continent- Asia. I know for sure that these were written with history as the witness- reflecting the transparency of traditions and culture, lifestyle and technology. Asian Literature embraces the writings in Asia covering up its geographical resources. Philippine literature tackles on the different phenomena, events and sightings and other eye-proven or fictional writings in Philippine setting. The fact that we have read so many stories but we might not be awre that we came across these two literary.