system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are Tagalog and most other Philippine languages significantly different from other Malay languages?

I am someone who used to be able to speak this language fluently in childhood but lost the ability to when I had to use English upon moving in the UK, but there is something that's captured my attention from time to time.

When I look at or hear a piece of text written in Malay, Indonesian or some other Malay language, I do not easily understand it as well as, say, a Philippine language (but I don't understand Ilokano, where my father is from). However, comparing a Philippine language to a non-Philippine language, one can see more commonalities between the languages of the Philippines than between other Malay languages. I think I remember trying to read and understand some Malay that that happened to be on the label of some packaging when I was very young. I was never taught it, and I simply don't understand it.

The most striking difference to me is lexical, where the Spanish influence of Philippine languages are far stronger. Additionally, an influence on the orthography seems to play a role, where a silent "h" often seems to appear at the end of words in non-Philippine Malay languages more often - I believe Arabic may have played a part in this, where this distinction may be in part, grammatical.

Aside from differing cultural influences in the past, I'm not entirely sure as to how speakers of Philippine languages would be less easily able to understand speakers of other Malay languages and vice versa. I do not know the extent of influence of outsiders towards the languages but also think some internal influences may have played a part too. What do any more of the informed linguists here think?
gpt
Because it's older. Tagalog and malay both come from the austronesian family but tagalog sepearted earlier from malay. Alao you're correct in that spanish and English have stronfer influence on tagalog due to centuries of colonization.