Jose Villa Panganiban (June 12, 1903 – October 13, 1972) was a Filipino lexicographer,[1][2] writer,[1][2] professor,[1][3] linguist,[2][3] polyglot,[3] poet,[4] journalist, radio personality, and translator.
[7] Panganiban worked as professor for English,[4] Tagalog, and Spanish languages in the UST[4] and San Beda College beginning in 1929.
By the late 1960s, he worked as an interviewer in the graduate schools of UST, the Philippine Normal College, and Manuel L. Quezon University.
[10] During World War II and months prior to the end of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, Panganiban once acted as Liaison Officer in meeting the American army paratroopers in Tagaytay.
[4][10] Thereafter, Panganiban taught Tagalog to a newly-arrived Dutch who was then appointed parish priest of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, within three months; the latter later suggested to merge two theories, thus reducing to six.
He also consulted publications, Diccionario Tagalog-Hispano by Pedro Serrano-Laktaw and another by INL secretary and executive officer Cecilio Lopez.
[4] Compilation of data for Panganiban's proposed bilingual dictionary-thesaurus took at least three decades, with the help of his advisers, Dr. Eufronio Alip and Rev.
[8][11] In 1941, a year since Pilipino became a compulsory subject in country's schools,[12] Panganiban began working on proposed dictionaries through writing a manuscript, with suggestions from Alip and Bazaco.
Aside from Alip, four other people did so in the next two years while Panganiban was in Manila, including then INL Director Lope K. Santos, whose interview with him gave way for the major revision of the manuscript in 1944, and Julián Cruz Balmaceda.
[11] The plan then continued, with two individuals evaluating the work in progress until part of it was published in Liwayway magazine as "Talahuluganang Tagalog-Ingles" from 1953 to 1964.
A thoroughly updated version translated into Filipino, Panitkan ng Pilipinas, was edited with Genoveva Matute and Corazon Kabigting, published in 1990 and became the most widely circulated literature textbook.
In expressing his love for a national language, both orally and in writing, JVP became a controversial advocate of Pilipino as the "wikang pambansa".