For every thoughtful Filipino one of the most gratifying symptoms of progressive national life in his country is the gradually increasing interest taken by his people in their own neglected native languages as a subject of popular instruction. Unfortunately, when their use in public schools is now being advocated, and they are actually made use of in the recently inaugurated campaign against illiteracy, the ill effect is apt to be overlooked which their long exclusion from public instruction has entailed on them, and which consists in a certain unstableness of their spoken and written use. Certainly no language, for highly cultivated as it may be, is free from vacillations, instances of such, however, threaten to gain ground in languages that are not taught at school, lack popular grammars and dictionaries, and live mostly in the mouth of their speakers, the best educated of whom, moreover, prefer to use a foreign language whenever learned or ornate speech is required.