I Forgot How To Speak My Own Language
Losing my bilingualism, and gaining it back again
Being bilingual will change your worldview. Learning a different language also exposes you to a new culture, and gives you new knowledge about the world and the people with whom we share it.
If you’re someone who grew up speaking the same language at home as you did at school, work, and in your day-to-day life, then you might have had no reason to be bilingual. But for this week’s newsletter I wanted to write about the story of how I kind of lost my bilingualism, and my journey to gain it back.
I’m from Manila, a city in the Philippines where most people speak Taglish, a mix of Tagalog (the native language) and English (the colonizer’s language, and also the language of international commerce). We are so good at speaking English that lots of young Filipinos even struggle to carry out a full conversation purely in Tagalog.
Me however, I moved away to Canada when I was 5 years old, so my English speaking skills REALLY skyrocketed. My mom tells me it only took a week of being at a Canadian school before I started fully speaking English at home. Eventually I lost my ability to speak Tagalog all together, but I was still able to understand my parents. Me and the other Filipino-Canadian kids I grew up with were all on a sliding scale of fading bilingualism. Some of them can’t even understand Tagalog at all.
Growing up in Canada, I had friends that went to Chinese school or Portuguese school after regular school, and they would spend the afternoons studying and speaking another language. But I would go back home and speak English.
I see a lot of Filipino-Canadian families where the parents actively contribute to our fading bilingualism by speaking Taglish among the adults and English to their little babies as they strap them into their strollers. When our generation has kids of our own, there will be even less Tagalog spoken around the house.
The generational divide is also a linguistic one.
It feels like Filipinos will go out of their way to make sure their children are excellent at speaking English, even at the cost of their bilingualism.
In the Philippines, speaking English is a sign of wealth, class, and education. Speaking English opens you up to better paying jobs around the world. It’s why my parents moved us to Canada in the first place. Us along with 10% of all Filipinos work overseas!
Speaking English fluently with an American accent is seen by some people as this big flex, and speaking it poorly is the punchline of a lot of jokes and self-deprecation.
On the other hand, Filipinos also take a lot of pride in speaking Tagalog, or any of our native languages, like Cebuano, Ilonggo, Ilocano, Waray, Kapampangan, Bicol, and many more. While speaking English may be associated with status, speaking our native languages might be be associated with honour and patriotism.
I started feeling ashamed for not knowing how to speak Tagalog very well. Either my followers would call me a fake Filipino or Filipino elders would ask me why I can only speak English. It started when I would go back to the Philippines on vacation to see my grandparents and cousins and I could no longer communicate with them smoothly. Sure, they could somewhat understand me and I could understand them, but there was some friction.
OBVIOUSLY there’s no such thing as a fake Filipino and it doesn’t matter what language you speak or whether you’ve ever been to the Philippines.
But I still wanted to connect to my heritage more, and I wanted to be able to speak to my extended family more. So about 10 years ago I decided to try learning how to speak Tagalog again. Some of my followers and family members would make fun of me for my broken Tagalog attempts, which was annoying and embarrassing. I didn’t want to be called a fake Filipino, or a konyo, which is a derogatory word for pretentious Filipinos that speak a lot of English.
It at least gave me empathy for my mom and dad who were made fun of for their broken English when we were all newcomers to Canada.
My Tagalog journey was greatly accelerated when I met my husband Ian, a white British man who had never heard Tagalog until he met me. Luckily, Ian was a language-lover. When he asked me to start teaching him Tagalog, we started studying it together, combining what I learned from my parents with what resources we could find online. I was inspired by how he was willing to start speaking it so confidently even though he made lots of mistakes. As a non-Filipino, the stakes were low for him, and he was fine with messing things up or pronouncing words incorrectly.
I, on the other hand, felt so much pressure over being a good Filipino that I was too embarrassed to speak Tagalog because I didn’t want to make mistakes in front of other Filipinos. But Ian showed me that you just have to be okay with making mistakes in order to get better.
And the benefits of being bilingual are so worth it. By learning Tagalog again, I’ve learned SO MUCH MORE than just how to speak Tagalog. I’ve been watching Filipino movies, Filipino vlogs, Filipino news, and reading about Filipino history. Through learning Tagalog, you’ll learn about colonization, politics, history, and geography. You learn about words like sarado, which comes from Spanish cerrado (to close), or foods like pancit, which comes from Hokkien pian e sit (noodles cooked quickly). Then there’s words like mukha, which comes from the Sanskrit word for face. Or the common phrase, bahala na, which sort of means, “leave it up to fate”, and may originate from one of our indigenous gods, Bathala. You’ll also learn about the Moro people, which are Filipinos who converted to Islam after the arrival of Muslim missionaries in the 13th century, but are called Moro because that’s the name given to them by Spanish missionaries.
I used to think that my Filipino identity was tied to superficial things like eating lumpia and singing karaoke and having a funny accent, but now I feel a stronger connection to my Austronesian roots, and a responsibility to encourage my fellow Filipino Canadians/Americans to learn about our history.
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I know I may not pronounce “Intramuros” perfectly in that video, but I’m still figuring out how to switch between Tagalog pronunciations and Canadian pronunciations all in one video!
It seems the only way to win as a Filipino is to be perfectly bilingual. We get ridiculed if we speak broken English, but we also feel shame if we speak in broken Tagalog. But speaking a second language poorly is way better than not speaking a second language at all.
Criticizing other people’s grammar and pronunciation is easy. Slipping back into the language you know best out of fear of judgment is also easy. Learning a new language and boldly making mistakes takes courage.
Before you go, I have two YouTube channel recommendations for Filipino creators that make videos in Tagalog and also talk about Filipino history and culture:
Kara David is a journalist who has a great YouTube channel but you can also search her name and find full-length documentaries! I always learn new words from her.
Kirby Araullo is a Filipino historian that makes amazing vids about the history of the Philippines. One of the great things about his channel is he sometimes uploads the same video in both English and Tagalog!
If you were looking for a sign to start learning a new language (or relearning your own language), then this is it!
Kyne! Your journey is very similar to mine. I left Caloocan when I was 5 also and very quickly lost my Tagalog when I settled in Texas. To this day, I can understand but I cannot speak…which has given me a kind of imposter syndrome around my heritage.
Interestingly, what has helped me through these feelings is being the faculty sponsor of the Asian Student Union at my school. Asian students, unsurprisingly, make up less than 10% of my campus’ demographics. Many of them speak their native tongues but so many of them are like me— feeling so Americanized but also feeling like we want to connect with Home. ASU has given them the comfort in at least knowing that even their teacher deals with “how Asian” she is.
My bio-kids don’t speak or understand and that makes me really sad. Lola tries to teach them but without full immersion, it’s really hard. Maybe this needs to be a family endeavor!