What do you prefer, English or Tagalog. I would choose English
Reason: Tagalog is the dialect of only a small portion of the population and it really is disadvantageous to the other regions hence another fuel for regionalism. English, a formal and universal language, great for business and looks more professional. Share yours.

i speak tagilocanolish. lol

Do ppl in non-Tagalog areas usually speak their own languages when they're w/ themselves. Because when I was in Bicol it seemed like everyone was speaking Tagalog and not Bicolano. It really bummed me out. I wish ppl would conserve their language.

English in education n business...but not in politics i remember majority of the poor filipino dnt even understand gma sona...pure english kasi maybe taglish can help

English in some areas but like graham cracker mention Flip should conserve our own language...
Like in cebu sum cebuano prefer speaking english as their second language rather than tagalog cause for them its much easier n they are more comfortable with it...

^ It's easier for a Cebuano to speak English rather than Tagalog? Are Tagalog & Cebuano that different from each other?

I agree...
when i was in surigao just last month, only few surigaonon spoke our native dialect and it hurts me to know that they prefer bisaya than surigaonon... when i was little, i never heard of surigaonon speaking bisaya but now... geez bisaya really rules in surigao...
eventhough its like that... i speak purely surigaonon when im with my co-surigaonons.... well at least i tried...



cebuanos prefer to use english than tagalog coz its hard for them to pronounce the tagalog words... i meant really hard.... like hindi = hende see?

lol because there are so many goddamn languages in bicol.

and according to wikipedia (lol) in camarines norte, people speak the almightly language of tagalog.

coño inglés........

very.....

trust me... ive been living here in cebu for 6 years and i still cant get used to their shouting when the fact that they are just telling you a story...

I speak Filipino or Tagalog with friends. English with foreigners or feeling foreigners. Paperwork in college is usually in English but if I want to be nationalistic I use formal Filipino. :P
Answer: I prefer Filipino or any Philippine language. For me, english is only needed in financial/employement matters. Other than that...

This thread is very interesting. I wasnt aware that it was so hard for Cebuanos to speak Tagalog. Anyone kno anything about Ilocanos and what language they use more of nowadays. It's mostly Ilocanos folks here, but I never hear them speaking Ilocano to each other. I wish they would though.

about bicolanos speaking tagalog. probably you were in camarines norte. since they are beside quezon province ,a huge part of camarines norte indeed speaks tagalog/ but in cam sur and other provinces in the riegion we speak our versions of bikol. rinconada, miraya-bikol, waray-bikol, bikol-waray. yes, we have too many dialiects . atwo neighboring towns might speak diffrent bikol dialects. we either speak old bikol, or tagalog to understand each other.
i once sat beside a nurse from nabua going to manila in a bus. since she spoke rinconada, we just conversed in tagalog. otherwise we won't understand each other.

FILIPINO is the national language, right? it used to be Tagalog for a long time. but that just wasn't right coz not everybody in the Philippines can speak Tagalog. anyway, Filipino is supposed to be made up of different Philippine dialects, not just Tagalog. i think it's a very good idea coz not all English words have a direct translation in Tagalog. like "miss" (from "i miss you") so people will just say "miss na kita". if i'm not mistaken there's a dialect here in the Philippines where "miss" has a direct translation. i just forgot what dialect and what word.

and when Tagalog was the national language, there was this "superior/inferior dialect" happening (or something like that). i think it still exists.

one thing i hate about Filipino is that it adopted all the English alphabets. like F, C, etc.. it's soooo confusing! like, why spell "impormasyon" (information) informasyon? one more is "jeep", it used to be spelled as "dyip" but now i think it's spelled as it is. (another is "research" (this is a different case though hehe) they spell it in Filipino as "reserts". i mean, why not use "saliksik"? "teacher" = titser, why not guro? layer = leyer, why not suson? (is that right? hehe) sheesh...) anyway, the result is people spell Filipino words differently.. but yeah, i guess it's not a big problem.. just pisses me off.

back to the topic:

i'll choose FILIPINO. well, English in some instances (like what the others said here). and that mentality that people who're not really good at English aren't smart.. puh-lease... and it's better to speak in Filipino if you're talking to someone who understands it rather than be a TH.

ewan ko! both nahihirapan ako, kasi di rin ako malalim sa tagalog, then english namn mejo minsan nawawala grammar ko!

Well I went to 2 parts of Bicol: Catanduanes (where my mom is from) & Sorsogon. I only heard Bikol a couple times in Catanduanes, mostly when my grandma was talking to her brother. But other than that, most ppl spoke Tagalog. When I was in Sorsogon, I asked someone if ppl there speak Bikol and she said most ppl speak Tagalog now. What a shame...

Of course Ilocanos speak Iloco in Ilocos. It's just simply understood that if you're speaking to a non-Ilocano. You speak a language that you both understand. We dont impose Ilocano to the rest of the country because we know who we are. From the tip of Luzon to Tarlac, Nueva Ecija and Quezon, the island of Mindoro and some parts of Mindanao, Hawaii and California. Iloco will be here to stay for a very long time. You not hearing us speak in Iloco just meant that we are just being polite. Besides, we want you Fil-Ams to learn Tagalog because it will be more useful to you than any of the native languages.

Speaking your language says who you are, no matter how many times you brag that you are a Filipino, if you dont speak any of the native languages. That's it, you're not. It's easy to say that it's a shame that we are loosing other native languages but lets face it. Tagalog is our last stand. So start with yourselves brothers. Preserve just one langauge by learning just one and we'll take care of the rest.

I miss you. = Nangungulila ako sa iyo. Sounds archaic. Ngeee...

Letter F is native to the Ibalois. Kafagway is the former name of Baguio. So is V as in Ivatans of Batanes and Manuvus of Mindanao. Letter C... well its not supposed to be a letter in the Alphabet because it can totally be replaced by letter S without problem.

i can't speak for catanduanes because it was in 2002 the last time i was there. but sorsogon, i went home last summer and everyone speaks bikol. probably what the person you spoke to meant was that everyone can speak tagalog now. indeed that is true. if you speak to sorsoganons in tagalog, they'll reply in tgalog or probably speak tagalog when a tagalog speaker is around so as not to alenate him/her or also to show off or practice their taglog skills. unless, the recent typhoons and volcanic eruptions did something to their tongues.

o a side note, i also heard that indeed in legaspi when you go to malls, many people suddenly shift to tagalog. i have not experienced it first hand though.

it foments regionalism? so you would then speak a foreign language instead? at least Tagalog you can find similarities, English in horribly spoken there by some people. wowzer. How about Spanish, let's all Spanish and Mandarin instead. Or Korean lots of people in the Philippines like that language.

^^^let me explain.
I heard sometime ago that it's better to have english as the medium or communication rather than tagalog since many dialects here are far from Tagalog. It's better we take it neutral than to make another dialect into our own national language. It is quite disadvantageous for other dialects that has little connection to the Tagalog dialect since Filipino is practically 80% Tagalog. It's better to have it english for the sake of uniformity & formalism (darn...when I watch 24 hours or TV Patrol, i would really laugh unlike when I look at ANC - so professional). This case is not colonial mentality since we were part of US a long time ago and that is has been a part of our culture now.

I'm embarrassed to say, but even though we're Filipino, my brother and I never learned proper Filipino/Tagalog. We know and use phrases here and there with our English but that's the extent to which we can use it.

We don't use Filipino at our home or with friends or relatives really, and all of our schooling has been in the United States unfortunately. My mom is a bit better off (she went to school at home before finishing her graduate/professional studies in the U.S.), but like the rest of us, she uses English (and some Spanish -- she's of the older, pre-War generation) in her day-to-day communication. I'm actually trying to learn with the help of books, audio lessons, and with the subset of my friends and relatives who speak the language.

My dad was a strange one, he prefer to speak english in the philippines and to us as kids. But around filipino elders he would speak tagalog.

UMM sorry to break it you but that is colonial mentality.