Awit — A metrical narrative form, often in twelve-syllable lines, used for romance, adventure, morality, and political indirection in Tagalog and related print-performance worlds.
Babaylan — A ritual specialist in several Philippine cultural contexts. The word's meaning and gender history vary by language and community; it should not be used as a universal label for all Indigenous religion.
Balagtasan — A twentieth-century Tagalog verse debate named for Francisco Balagtas, performed publicly through formal poetic argument.
Baybayin — A precolonial and early-colonial Philippine syllabic script especially associated with Tagalog regions. It is one member of a larger set of distinct Philippine script traditions, not their collective original alphabet.
Bag-ong Kusog — A major Cebuano periodical associated with Vicente Rama. Rama's preface to Larawan says that pieces in the collection had appeared there and in Kauswagan.
Bikol / Bicol languages — A group of languages in the Bicol region with distinct oral, devotional, poetic, dramatic, and print traditions.
Binisaya / Bisaya — A speaker-used language name that can mean Cebuano in many contexts, including historical print. It can also be used more broadly across the Visayas, so the exact work language must still be named.
Cebuano / Sebwano / Sugbuanon — Names for a major Philippine language with extensive literature in Cebu, elsewhere in the Visayas, Mindanao, and diaspora. It is not a dialect of Tagalog and does not encompass every Visayan language.
Corrido / korido — A metrical narrative commonly associated with octosyllabic lines and rapid romance or adventure; historical use overlaps with awit and local performance conventions.
Darangen — The extensive Maranao epic tradition of Lake Lanao, performed in song and preserved through oral and manuscript transmission.
Duplo — A verse debate and social performance historically associated with wakes, verbal skill, and later theatrical development.
Dinalídalí — One of Larawan's own genre labels, generally attached to shorter, quick-moving pieces or sketches. It should be preserved without forcing a perfect modern English equivalent.
Filipino — The constitutionally named national language. It is historically based on Tagalog but should not be projected backward as an automatic label for every Tagalog text.
Filipino literature — A flexible label that can mean literature by Filipinos, in Filipino, or within Philippine national culture. Because these meanings differ, Good Works prefers the exact language and community relation for each work.
Hiligaynon — A major language of Western Visayas and Mindanao with its own poetry, novel, drama, periodical, and oral traditions; sometimes called Ilonggo in everyday usage, though the labels are not perfectly interchangeable.
Hudhud — Ifugao narrative chants associated with rice cultivation, harvest, funeral wakes, customary law, ancestry, and community transmission.
Ilocano / Ilokano — A major northern Philippine language and diaspora field with extensive oral, poetic, religious, dramatic, and print traditions.
Indio — A colonial Spanish legal and racial label applied to native inhabitants; in literary history it records colonial hierarchy and should not be treated as a neutral modern identity.
Kapampangan — A major language of Central Luzon with distinct poetic, dramatic, religious, and print histories.
Katipunan — The revolutionary society formally named Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan, associated with Andrés Bonifacio and the 1896 Revolution.
Kauswagan — An earlier Cebuano newspaper edited by Vicente Rama. Rama says that many pieces later gathered in Larawan first circulated in Kauswagan or Bag-ong Kusog.
Komedya / moro-moro — A Philippine theatrical tradition shaped by colonial romance and Christian-Muslim conflict. Its performance history is substantial, but its stereotypes require direct context.
Ladino — In early colonial Philippine literary history, a bilingual writer or translator fluent in Spanish and a local language, especially associated with devotional print.
Liwayway — A highly influential Tagalog magazine and mass-print institution founded in the twentieth century, important to serialized fiction, poetry, illustration, and popular readership.
Maranao / Meranaw — A people and language field centered around Lake Lanao, with Islamic, epic, genealogical, oral, and manuscript traditions.
Mga / mg̃a — The modern and historical forms of the Tagalog plural marker. Poblete's edition frequently prints mg̃a, preserving an older orthographic convention.
Noli me tangere — Latin for “do not touch me.” Rizal used the phrase as the title of his 1887 Spanish novel; Poblete's 1909 edition explains it through both scripture and the metaphor of a painful social cancer.
Pangwakas / pangwacas — Ending or final part. Poblete's historical spelling appears in Pangwacas na Bahagui.
Pangasinan — A major language of northwestern Luzon with its own oral, religious, poetic, dramatic, and print history.
Pasyon — A long vernacular narrative of Christ's passion, sung or recited in community practice. Philippine pasyon traditions transformed translated Christian narrative through local language and performance.
Philippine literature — Literature related to the peoples, languages, and histories of the Philippine archipelago. It includes many languages and cannot be equated with Tagalog or Filipino alone.
Propaganda Movement — The late nineteenth-century reformist movement associated with Filipino writers and organizers in Spain and the Philippines, including Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, and Graciano López Jaena.
Sarsuwela / zarzuela — Musical theatre adapted from Spanish forms and transformed in Tagalog and other Philippine languages.
Suyat — A modern collective term for Indigenous Philippine writing systems. It is useful for relation-building but should not erase the distinct names, communities, and histories of individual scripts.
Sugbo — Cebu in Cebuano usage. In Larawan, it names the city and print center where The Cebu Press issued the collection in 1921.
Sugilanon — A Cebuano story or narrative. Larawan uses the label alongside dinalídalí and, once, Sugilanong Amerikanhon.
Tagalog — A Philippine language and ethnolinguistic field centered historically in parts of Luzon and Manila and now spoken widely. It is the principal historical base of Filipino but remains a specific language label.
Tagalog translation of Noli — Pascual H. Poblete's 1909 translation, the first Tagalog Noli. It is neither Rizal's Spanish original nor a modern standardized Filipino edition.
Tausug — A language and people of the Sulu archipelago and neighboring regions with Islamic, oral, poetic, genealogical, and maritime traditions.
Waray — A major language of Samar, Leyte, and neighboring areas with its own oral, poetic, dramatic, and print traditions.
Visayan / Bisayan languages — A wider set of related but distinct Philippine languages including Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Aklanon, Kinaray-a, and others. The label is not permission to collapse their literatures into one language.