For those who don’t know. I am a Filipino American.
And for those who don’t know what a Filipino is, a Filipino is a person from the Philippine islands. As for my parents, my mom was a descendant of a tribe in Davao called the Bagobo tribe while my dad came from the poor farm provinces of Bulacan. The Philippines is an amazing place with great food, culture, people, and language. Which all of those I sadly missed out on. Unlike my parents, I was born in the US. Where opportunity is as vast as the people. Sadly, most of those people weren’t Filipino.
As I started school, one thing my teachers told my parents was that they should refrain from teaching me Tagalog. Which really got to my parents. Especially to my dad who did not speak English very well. From my schools words, they told them that teaching me my language wouldn’t be good because then I would try to mix the language up or I may not understand English well enough to pass. And from that point on, my parents encouraged me to speak English. And they didn’t only want me to speak it, they wanted me to cherish it. They told me that I needed English if I wanted to make a living in New York. They told me I needed to be able to speak fluently and be able to say my thoughts. And as far as I can tell, I have tried my hardest to do well in speaking and writing English. And my parents taught me some Tagalog. But only when it came to labeling people. It was stuff like Lolo and Lola meant Grandma and Grandpa. Ate and Kuya meant older sister and brother. At that time when I was younger, I felt proud that I could speak English well compared to my parents at least. But that mindset changed a little when I visited the Philippines for the first time.
This was my second time going to the Philippines. 2019
The first time I went to the Philippines was when I was 6. This was going to be the first time I ever met my cousins. I remember being excited to meet them, hoping they’d tell me cool stuff. Mainly about insects and fun reptiles they see. But when I got there, things seemed off. Everyone was talking around me, saying hi, talking to my parents. But I couldn’t understand anyone. Everyone there was speaking Tagalog. And like my parents, when I would try to talk to them, they would only speak even more broken English. It felt like I was with a bunch of strangers, speaking in a strange tongue. A strange tongue I wanted to know. And on my second time visiting, when I was 14, that feeling of being left out felt even worse. When I would talk to my cousins, they tended to swap from one conversation that would start in English, but then swap languages and start a completely different conversation. which caused a huge disconnect.
Me with my cousins from Davao
I don’t have any resentment in them for doing this because this was their home language. But I only wish that I could have been a part of that. A part of their language and a part of their culture. And then I started to have a lingering thought in my mind. “If only I could speak Tagalog.” And I guess that’s the thing with language. Language is what connects people. It’s how people tell each other how they’re doing, it’s how information and information are passed down. And most importantly, it’s how the community was formed, And I was excluded from this. And like I said in the first paragraph, no one around me was Filipino, so I couldn’t learn about my culture from the people around me. And what scares me most of all is if I have a family, with a wife and kids, and they ask me “What’s it like to be a Filipino”? Because if they ask this, I wouldn’t be able to give them an answer, or I could only tell them a small part of it. Which would only skim the surface of the true culture of the Philippines.
With all that being said, I am still grateful that my parents encouraged me to learn proper English. I mean without it, I probably couldn’t have passed school, gotten into my first internship, or even written my college essay. Not only that, without me knowing proper English, I probably couldn’t have met all the friends I made in high school. So the point I’m getting at is that I’m not regretting the fact that I learned English. But I think that they could have taught me in my native tongue as well as encouraged me to speak English. If my school had been more encouraging, I could have been able to dive deeper into knowing my culture and where I came from.
Turon. My favorite Filipino dessert
