Who Wants to Learn Tagalog?
Thoughts on language learning for third-culture kids and anyone else, really
Dear near-and-far friends,
Are you into learning languages? I think it’s cool to be bilingual or multilingual, and I’m very interested in the phenomenon called code-switching (which I will explore another time). Something I heard recently made me think more about this.
My son, who’s currently home with me and his dad while he’s on summer break from college, recently had a few friends over to hang out in our house. One of his friends, a British-Singaporean young man, remarked while I was chatting with their little group, “I would be interested to learn Tagalog, actually.”
Who wants to learn Tagalog?
We were chatting about his visit here in Singapore. He used to live in Singapore and moved back to London a few years ago. He talked a bit about his current stay with his Singaporean grandmother and how he’s having to practice his Chinese. And speaking of languages, he said he’d be interested to learn Tagalog.
At first, I was a bit surprised when he said that. He did go on to say that he thinks it would be funny if he went to Manila together with my son and their other friend, who’s another Filipino third-culture kid like my son, and if it were him, the Caucasian-Chinese young man who would start speaking with the locals in Tagalog. I get that it would almost be like a little prank because who would expect someone who obviously looks like a foreigner in Manila to be speaking in the local language.
His remark about being interested in learning Tagalog as a non-Filipino who doesn’t live in the Philippines struck me, and it got me thinking more about it. Perhaps, aside from it being a tool for having fun while traveling, he’s curious about it because he’s become friends with several Filipinos during his time living in Singapore. Not that his Filipino friends speak Tagalog necessarily, but perhaps more of having some kind of deeper knowledge of his friends’ culture.
This made me think of a time recently when I was talking to my son about learning languages. I said that while it’s not practical for me, I’m interested in learning Japanese because I have a soft spot for Japanese literature, art, and culture. In the past, I was trying to learn French and Spanish for fun but I’d stopped (no formal lessons, btw, just Duolingo like many casual learners). My son said that if he were to learn a language now, he would want to learn Tagalog.
Everyone we know speaks English anyway.*
My son grew up mostly in Singapore, with a few years in Manila in between. English is his first language, his native tongue. Like many Gen X Filipino parents from Manila that I know, my husband and I didn’t make a big effort to teach our kids to speak Tagalog fluently. We naturally spoke to each other and to our kids in English or Taglish. The books we read, the TV shows and movies we watched, the music we listened to were all in English. The friends that my son had made growing up also spoke English. It didn’t matter if they were Singaporean Chinese or Indian, if they were Filipino living in Singapore, if they were Finnish or French, or if they were any other nationality or race. The children he met and befriended in the playgrounds and in homeschooling groups all spoke to him and to each other in English.
It’s never too late to learn a language you really want to learn.
I do feel a bit guilty about not putting more effort into teaching my son my own native tongue. Tagalog was my first language while I was growing up in Manila. However, even from a young age, I fell in love with the English language. All the books and magazines I read, all the shows I watched and songs I listened to were in English. Still, I did grow up bilingual, as many Filipinos do. Now I wish I had given that to my son. (When he was much younger, I did try to teach him Tagalog when we were homeschooling in Manila. My young son, who I suppose was being practical then, explained to me that everyone he talks to in Manila speaks English so he didn’t need to learn Tagalog. Fair enough.)
I’m also reminded of many of my cousins, nieces, and nephews in the US who want to learn Tagalog (or Filipino. They are actually different languages while being very similar. Tagalog is the language spoken in the Tagalog region of the Philippines, while Filipino is the national language of the Philippines, and it’s developed based mainly on Tagalog but with many other words from other languages in the Philippines plus some from English, Spanish, etc.) I get the impression that they are very keen to learn it as a way to connect with their Filipino roots.
Perhaps being interested in or choosing to learn a language reflects our connection to a culture or people. Intrinsic motivation, fueled by personal relationships or a passion for its culture, can surely help in keeping us learning and hopefully, eventually being able to communicate in a new language or at least appreciate it more.
Any of you interested in learning Tagalog / Filipino, Japanese, Spanish, French, or any other language for fun? Maybe we can swap resources? Let me know.
Your logophile and language-curious friend,
Lea
*I know that not everyone everywhere speaks English, and not everyone wants or needs to speak English. It’s a half-joke, half-truth about the circles that my family moves in. Of course, nowadays it’s common to come across people who don’t speak the same languages we do, and those circumstances can make for interesting, eye-opening experiences.