The Filipina And English

[MikeB]

sounds rather odd to me. Why would anybody VOLUNTEER to say to you, in English of course (assuming you were speaking with them in English and not Ilongo), that they do not like to speak Tagalog unless the subject matter came up.

Let's not beat this to death. Probably came up while discussing which dialect the foreigner should learn. I'm skeptical of foreigners saying (or posting) that they are fluent or conversational in any of these dialects. Unless you are putting in a massive amount of time and effort it takes many years to build up the vocabulary enough to be "conversational". Learning sentence structure, nuances, all the shortcuts they use. Maybe 20+. Hardly worth it, imo.

[Tukaram (Tim)]

When Spain drew an arbitrary line around a bunch of islands and magically made them a country a lot of provinces did not like the Tagalogs and still don't.  Most of the people i know are Ilongo's or Antiqueno and say that Cebu should have been the capital and Cebuano (or Ilongo) the national language. 

 

My fiance speaks Kinray-a, with a little English, some Tagalog, and less Ilongo.  The only time she speaks Tagalog is if she goes to Manila.  Other than that it was just something learned in school.  She speaks Tagalog better than she does English (barely) but would rather speak English.  It was hard for me to have her explain that she can understand some of what is on TV but not enough to translate it.  And TV uses very simple words...

 

I was talking to a lady I met at the gym the other day and she asked me if I spoke Ilongo. I laughed and said all I knew was enough to ride a jeepney.  I said the TV spoke Tagalog, the neighbors Ilongo, and the family Kinray-a.  So what should I learn.  And she quickly said don't bother with Tagalog.  "We don't speak it unless we have to.  I would rather speak English".  I have heard the same thing in Cebu.

 

I am trying to get my fiance to learn more English but she says she knows enough ha ha  :tiphat:

[robert k]

Maybe you could make up some sentences that pique her interest so she will want to learn what you just said, she would have to learn then. Like I was talking to the girl at the store about [ insert unfamilliar word here ] , I bet she will learn that word. :)

[BrettGC]

I spend most of my time on Negros and SAO advised her local variety of Bisaya for day-to-day living. She speaks very good English, passable German (lived there for 2 years), Tagalog, and left-handed Swahili when she's angry at me [emoji12]

Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk

[crad]

When Spain drew an arbitrary line around a bunch of islands and magically made them a country a lot of provinces did not like the Tagalogs and still don't.  Most of the people i know are Ilongo's or Antiqueno and say that Cebu should have been the capital and Cebuano (or Ilongo) the national language. 

 

Ilongo the national language. When only about 7% of Filipinos speak it. Someone was having a laugh at you. You could make a better case for Cebuano, but there is still a higher number of native Tagalog speakers than Cebuano. And when Tagalog is spoken so much in Luzon the way it is, when Luzon has been more advanced economically and culturally throughout the past centuries, then it was a total no-brainer for the early Filipino nationalists to choose to retain Manila as the capital and develop the idea of Tagalog as the national language - they had to choose one. Although it is of course not coincidental that most of them had Tagalog as their first language themselves. How could the Filipinos have attempted to govern the country from Cebu even if it had been an option they considered, which they didn't. Even if they HAD considered it, It would have been totally impossible, and they would have known it. Not that they had much chance to govern the country from Manila in the event anyway, as the United States invaded before the ink on their Declaration of Independence, which was written in Spanish, was dry.

Edited June 9, 2014 by crad

[Thomas]

 

I was talking to locals about what language I should learn.  Tagalog is on TV, Ilongo is the local language (officially it is something else but all locals call it Ilongo), and the family speaks Kinray-a.  Everyone said to learn a little Ilongo and a little Kinray-a. ALL of them say they would rather speak English than Tagalog.  T :tiphat:

they likely said that, only because you are a kano and that is what they possibly thought you wanted to hear. You should also always be on your guard about asking leading questions, to Filipinos. Tagalog is without doubt the lingua franca of the Philippines and it is a long way ahead, of English. Which should not be a surprise to anybody, as Tagalog, unlike English and the other European or Indo-European languages, is part of the same language family as the other Filipino languages and dialects (although Filipino languages and dialects are much more diverse than the languages and dialects of Malaysia). Choosing a lingua franca was one of the things the revolutionary 'founding fathers' of the Philippines realised that they had to do, if they were ever going to make a go of governing their country, and by choosing Tagalog I am totally 100% sure, that they made the right call. It could not have been anything else. They had little or no choice but to choose Tagalog. But then after the Filipino version of July 4, 1776, their Declaration of Independence, the United States came along and decided to invade the Philippines, which had the effect of altering the linguistical mix over the longer term. Prior to that, nobody had ever considered the English language to have any special role in the Philippines' languages set up.  In those days English was no different to French and both of them were a long way behind Spanish. Had McKinley and the USA decided not to bother invading the Philippines, Spanish, not English, would have been by far the most important 'foreign' or European language or at least it would have been for a long time, after the Filipino declaration of independence in on June 12,1898. And in some ways, Spanish language and custom is still important in the Philippines. Almost everybody in the Philippines goes under Spanish personal names, and nearly all the placenames are Spanish even though, even more than English, almost nobody in the Philippines speaks the Spanish language at home.

Well. Average Filipinos with other first language than Tagalog, I suppouse KNOW Tagalog better than English (e g by TV),

BUT still - many of them don't WANT to talk Tagalog...    :)

(Specialy ?) many Visayans are GRUMPY because Tagalog got that position, although Visaya/Cebuano language was almost as big back when the LEADERS decided to make Tagalog the official language...

It isn't odd the leaders chosed Tagalog, because big part of the top leaders are from where they have Tagalog as first language, but many Filipins like the decision...

 

Well. The leaders could have made more languages official...

(Compare: In Sweden Swedish dominates I guess 98 %, but we have 4 (or is it 5?  :)     official languages anyway.  Up in north of Sweden are the other languages first language for some people.)

[Americano]

 

 

 

 

If a foreigner who is an English speaker goes to a doctor, lawyer or dentist he or she will not need a translator. Eve if you go to court the court session is held in English. If you cannot speak English then your words or testimony will be translated into English for the Court and for everyone in attendance to hear and for the official record. I make this statement after sitting in court through several court cases. If anyone has a different experience please state your experience here.

your experience shows that even though English is supposed to be the language of the law in the Philippines, it obviously isn't if a foreigner needs his testimony translated in court. May I ask if a foreigner was involved in the cases you mention. Because I have a friend who is a prosecutor in Manila and she says she has never been at any court where whether Tagalog was not spoken in court at some point in the session. Witnesses almost never give evidence in English, but in Manila, they give evidence in Tagalog. How could anybody expect a Filipino taxi driver to give evidence in English, if they are required to give evidence in a trial. Just sometimes, she told me, they have a witness whose Tagalog is so bad, that they give evidence in their native dialect, whatever it is, and a translator is provided.

 

 

I didn't say a foreigner needs his testimony translated in court.

 

I said, "If you cannot speak English then your words or testimony will be translated into English for the Court and for everyone in attendance to hear and for the official record."

 

I was the only foreigner in court when I sat through several cases. All of the other people were Filipinos so I'm sure court wasn't held in English just for me. When someone couldn't speak in English or chose to speak in another language then their lawyer or another lawyer or court employee would translate what they said.

 

My experience is in Cebu so it could be different in Manila where they seem to be proud of their Tagalog and may not go by the rules of court but I wouldn't believe it until I sat in court at least one time.

 

In the News today was an article titled: 

Should Pinoy kids learn Mandarin?  https://anc.yahoo.com/news/should-pinoy-kids-learn-mandarin-051700494.html

Some of the reader comments I like are:

 

Tony Said:  "What a darn stupid idea of all language why Mandarin? What are they thinking?? Are'nt we tired of Chinese invading our territories and Illegal Chinese vendors in Divisoria? Total idiots, stupid whoever thought of this!!!!!!! Students should first learn English, which is the international language. Filipinos are a bit poor in English. Some do not know from present to past tense when they speak or write. "

 

Jonothan said:  "Why the heck mandarin language??? Why not offer other Filipino languages, maybe this can give unity to our country."

 

Sakura said:  "It's confusing that Philippines has 2 official language: Filipino & English, as a result, Filipinos end up not learning well either, as if this is not "confusing enough" the DEPED wants to introduce Mandarin to PH schools? People in DEPED are suppose to be intelligent."

[Tukaram (Tim)]

Well. Average Filipinos with other first language than Tagalog, I suppouse KNOW Tagalog better than English (e g by TV), BUT still - many of them don't WANT to talk Tagalog... :) (Specialy ?) many Visayans are GRUMPY because Tagalog got that position, although Visaya/Cebuano language was almost as big back when the LEADERS decided to make Tagalog the official language...

 

Yep that is what I am saying.  They don't like it.

 

...and crad you have an odd view of history. Spain gave us the PI's.  We never really invaded, like Spain did.

[crad]

 

 

.Spain gave us the PI's.  We never really invaded, like Spain did.

 

 

 

oh come on. Spain may have ceded the Philippines to the USA, but the Philippines did not recognise that, having already declared their independence. Aguinaldo only recognised American sovereignty after he had been captured in war. Of course the USA invaded the Philippines. Perhaps you will try to make out that Britain did not invade the USA after the USA declared their independence in 1776, and just made do with the troops that were already there, And even that is not an appropriate analogy, because when the Philippines declared their independence, the Spanish American war had not even finished and there wasn't a single American soldier in the Philippines. If there was no US invasion of the Philippines then how come there were no American soldiers there in June 1896 but many thousands of them a few months later? Did the Filipinos invite them in?

 

but back to the languages thing :

 

My experience is in Cebu so it could be different in Manila where they seem to be proud of their Tagalog and may not go by the rules of court but I wouldn't believe it until I sat in court at least one time.

 

of course English is the language of the law in the Philippines. All the legislation is in English and the proceedings are supposed to be conducted in English, the transcript and records are in English, just like a number of other countries in the region i.e. Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, however it is never the only language spoken in Filipino courts. My friend who works in Manila is not a Tagalog native speaker, her first language is a Bisaya dialect, Masbateno. But she has no problem using either Tagalog-based Filipino or English as a working language, her Tagalog is better than her English but she is fluent in both having received a good education (in Manila). Sometimes she does trials in Cebu and Cebuano is spoken in courts by counsel and people working in the court too, like Tagalog is in Manila. And she says that Tagalog-based Filipino is even spoken in asides in Cebu courts too, though not as much as Cebuano is obviously.

 

but there is concern among some Filipinos that English being the language of the law in the Philippines is not such a good thing. Because it opens up a gulf between the majority ordinary Filipino 'masses' who do not speak English very well, and the minority elite, who do. Because despite what has been said here, English is much the more elitist language of the Philippines than Tagalog-based Filipino is.  Something like 85-90% of Filipinos have Tagalog as either a first or second language. When it is in English a great many Filipinos just cannot follow the proceedings properly in courts as observers so easily. So therefore they can feel de facto excluded from the judicial process just by the very fact that the proceedings are in English. So there are Filipinos, whose first language may not be Tagalog, who think it should be, and are campaigning for it to be used more in legal proceedings on the basis that justice must not only be done but should also be seen (or heard) to be done.

 

Filipinos are always going to argue about what is the best language, particularly speakers of the Big Five - Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Ilongo and Bicol. But of those 5, if you were to choose one then it has to be Tagalog.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Old55
Off topic.

[robert k]

Crad or Whippy?