Batangas, from the Region 4A – CALABARZON, is a province filled with diverse traditions, wonders and is also an awesome place for food. Yes, their foods are really delicious and they have their own renditions of some of the foods that are common in the Philippines. The national language of the Philippines which is namely Filipino – which is also the name for the people living in this country –, originated from this region specifically called as the Katagalugan or Tagalog and is the main basis for their rough dialect of Batangueño. It is using the actual Filipino language, only that it had extra words that are used for expressing the statement more and there are other vocabulary terms that are simply original and exclusively used coming from this province. Few examples are ala, eh, areh, and also the usage of ga instead of ba. With a few tweaks and some removals of terms, this dialect turned out to be the language that is widely used within the country for all the islands. Describing the dialect, it sounds witty, rough, and expressive. It literally contains a lot of expressions that could almost be poetic in the end. For me, it’s actually more expressive than Bisaya, the dialect being used by the people living the vicinity of the islands of Visayas, but Bisaya is more unique than Batangueño in terms of vocabulary and sentence forms. If ever you visited Batangas, be prepared to get scared of the people that are conversing along your way, for as what I have said, they seem angry all the time.

Batangas is a province filled with antiques relating to our Christian religion. It has numerous churches, huge cathedrals and basilicas. Also, did you know that this province has the largest church in Asia? Just like the majority of the Filipinos, Batangueños are really faithful to Christianity. Of course, the cathedrals that stood in this province will not be possible without the church themselves. Another trivia! Did you know that Lipa is considered as the “Rome of the Philippines” due to the huge number of seminaries, retreat houses, convents including the ones inside some catholic schools and monasteries that can be found in this city? Lipa has a big cathedral as well and parishes are scattered all around the whole city.  I think the Spaniards really did well in this place, not only in Lipa, but in the whole province of Batangas in general. The culture in this province usually coincides with their faith on religion even though culture and religion should be different. Feasts are held with the corresponding feast days of different saints or religious figures. It’s always a must for people to do this because it is basically tradition. Tradition that never changes and only the people that are doing them are the ones that do change.