Thanks for bringing this up on this talk page before reverting this change yourself I don t have a POV axe to grind here but neither do I have the historical legal or linguistic expertise to argue either side of the question I certainly do not have expertise as relates to how things would have been viewed in 1899 from the point of view of the linguistics or the legal thinking of the period I ll describe my understanding below and hope for further input here from others more knowledgeable than myself I probably relied on this translation which is credited to one Sulpicio Guevara in removing the sentence I had no idea at the time who this Sulpicio Guevara might be Further research has since turned up this page which identifies him as the compiler and editor of the 1972 publication The laws of the first Philippine Republic the laws of Malolos 1898 1899 The translation is footnoted on page 203 Translation by the author The title page of this publication credits Sulpico M Guevara A B LL B LL M Division of Research Law Reform University of the Philippines Law Center as of 1972 Article 93 reads in this translation as That page mentioned above also leads to an alternative translation from The development of Philippine politics by Maximo M Kalaw A footnote identifies this translation as one originally printed as exhibit IV Volume I Report of the Philippine Commission to the President January 31 1900 The title page of this publication credits Maximo M Kalaw AA B ll B and identifies it as a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan Article 93 reads in this translation as The Spanish text found here reads as follows My re interpretation of the thinking here after looking at both of these english translations is that Article 93 recognizes that the Spanish language is de facto the language used at the time of the promulgation of the Malolos constitution for the specified official purposes and the article provides explicit constitutional authority to specify a de jure official language for these purposes Looking at this article I see that the lead sentence presently reads Spanish was the first language of the Philippines since the conquest by Spain in the 16th century with the word language wikilinked to the official language article I think that the piped wikilinking done there goes beyond the boundaries of Spanish being an official language I suggest that this sentence should be changed to something like Spanish was recognized in the first constitution of the Philippines as being the de facto official language at the time Comments anyone