How Does Conversation Work With Your Filipina Wife/gf?

[Dave Hounddriver]

Any opinions, from people who have dated/married a filipina? Does this get better over time?

 

My observations from 2 long term relationships with filipinas:  The first one was better than most locals when it came to conversational English and she got better with time as she studied the dictionary daily and interacted with my social circle that included many native English speakers (yes that even includes some Australians  :hystery:  ).  Then we moved to the province where she grew up and she started hanging out with all her old friends.  At that point her English reverted to pidgin. A combination of things that started with our move to her province caused our break up. (Its been said many times to live far from where she grew up if you want your relationship to grow and I found out the hard way that this is true.)

 

The second relationship started our better than most at English as she grew up in a tourist area and was constantly around foreign visitors who spoke to her in English.  She is also very smart and picks up idioms from every English speaker she communicates with.  She is quick to pick up on jokes and sarcasm so you need to watch what you say around her.  She also gives it back pretty good if you try to have a battle of wits with her.

[Gerald Glatt]

They speak? 

[Thomas]

Less materialistic

I made a Freudian missreading 

"Less mathematic" :lol:     

(Very few are good at mathematics, but there are exceptions.)

 

Answer to what you REALY wrote:

Well. Many Filipinas are materalistic, but the good ones are not   :)

I want a big house, but my gf only want a small  - because it's much to clean a big  :lol:

you wouldnt have the "connection" you might have with an american woman, and while sex is great, everyone knows, you need to be able to have good conversation, to have a successful relationship.

Well. I thought talk will be LESS necesary with time   :mocking:   The more you get to know each other, the more will be obvious...

but I suppouse it will take longer time to reach that with a Filipina than with one from your home country, because of the CULTURAL differences.

Btw - Filipins have partly an other body language than us, which can make many misdunderstandings.

E g what I thought ment

suprised (=open mouth)

for Filipins that mean

Yes.

(At least in some parts of Phils. It become extra complicated by there are some cultural differences WITHIN Phils too. Mindanao is rather much different from Luzon.)

[bows00]

So why don't you guys learn Tagalog?  I tried some Rosetta Stone, and I don't think it will be that difficult, and you are bound to pick it up much faster if you are living there...

[scott h]

So why don't you guys learn Tagalog?

 

Good point,,,I got the rosetta stone program. Very helpful (as much of it as I took) real good for basic words and phases. But it is almost like taking high school Spanish then talking to your Mexican/American friends,,,they look at you funny.

[Thomas]

So why don't you guys learn Tagalog?  I tried some Rosetta Stone, and I don't think it will be that difficult, and you are bound to pick it up much faster if you are living there...

When I have settled, I will study the LOCAL language some (probably Cebuano)

but I don't expect to ever be any good at it   :)

so I suppouse important conversations will have to be in English in the future too.

 

Of TEACHING reasons, I will speak English with my future kids, while my wife will speak Cebuano, so the kids learn two languages from start.

[Americano]

From my experience of being married to a Vietnamese for about 20 years and being around many Vietnamese during that time and from being married to two Filipinas starting in 2006 and living in the Philippines for the past five years, Filipinos are not teachers so if you want to learn one of their languages you will probably have to take the initiative to learn it yourself.  Filipinos don't even teach their children, they depend on the schools to teach them.

 

After about 17 years of being married to a Vietnamese I could understand most conversations in Vietnamese but I wasn't a fluent speaker.  I believe if I could live in the Philippines for 50 years I still wouldn't understand most conversations, partly because they are not teachers, they do not pronounce their words clearly and by syllables and they have so many languages.

 

Here's the way I look at it.  I know I will never be fluent in any of their over 100 languages.  A Filipina who graduated high school has already spend 10 years learning English in a class room so it should be much easier for her to continue learning English than for me to try to learn a language that I never heard until I came to the Philippines.

 

My wife and I are very good at having conversations on any subject but I believe she is an exception to most Filipinas.  She had to work in the mountains at a young age so she didn't attend school much and therefore learned very little English at school but one of her Aunts got her a job in a mall as the announcer when she was just 15 years old.  She was required to make every announcement in Vasaya and then in English.  It was very hard for her at first but being very intelligent and having a strong desire to learn English she was able to keep the job and excelled at it. Now she can speak English all day but she changes to another language when speaking to a Filipino because if she speaks English the Filipino will think she is acting like she is better than them.

 

I have a foreigner friend who has been living with his Filipina gf for over 3 years.  She speaks very little English so they have a lot of misunderstandings.  One day he was talking to me when his gf yelled to him "not yet" He didn't have any idea what she was talking about.  Another day she said "its finished"  If he knew the subject she was thinking about then maybe her short 2 word phrase would make some sense. 

[Thomas]

Another day she said "its finished" If he knew the subject she was thinking about then maybe her short 2 word phrase would make some sense.

Yes. Huge difference if it was the dinner or the relation   :)

[Dave Hounddriver]

So why don't you guys learn Tagalog? 

 

I am not exactly a cunning linguist but I did dabble at trying to learn Tagalog before moving to Cebu.  When trying to use it people thought I was from Mars as English is actually used more than Tagalog in Cebu.  Of course the common language there is Cebuano but after trying to learn a bit of that I realized there were so many dialects from all the different areas that even local Visayan speakers do not always understand each other.  It is not uncommon for them to resort to English to understand each other.  But just as I was starting to understand what was going on, I moved to a place where half the people spoke Waray Waray and even my partner at the time did not understand them.

 

So that is why most guys don't learn Tagalog unless they plan to live in an area of Manila.

[Tukaram (Tim)]

So why don't you guys learn Tagalog?

Because I live Western Visayas.  The TV speaks Tagalog, the neighbors speak Ilongo, and the family speaks Kinray-a.

 

Anytime I asked about Tagalog the locals said they would rather speak English.  In Iloilo they say learn Ilongo or stick with English.  In Antique they said learn Kinray-a, or stick with English.  Tagalog is not popular around these parts - they only use it when they absolutely have to   ha ha  :tiphat: