English and Spanish in Philippines

Hispanic   Tue Jan 12, 2010 12:55 pm GMT
I would like to know the number of real speakers of English and Spanish in the Philippines.

English, according to some webpages is spoken by some 50% of the population. Is that true?

Spanish is spoken by some 3 million speakers. Tagalog (Filipino) is spoken as first or second language by a lot of people there. Tagalog is almost a Spanish creole (half of the vocabulary is Spanish). So, is it true that a Tagalog speaker can study Spanish in only one year?