now i know that the spanish and american culture had deeply influenced the filipino culture. here is what i see too often among filipino people. they tend to speak tagalog and would also use english words/and or phrases while they are speaking. i even see this in filipino tv. why is this? from what i've seen, even on AF, this is pretty common and sooner or later, filipinos would completely replace their native language with english.

I guess there are some english words that Filipinos prefer to use rather than the tagalog ones. It could be because its easier to say or maybe they want to say it faster or something (faster i mean there are words in tagalog that are too long to say and a quicker equivalent is available in english). Or maybe because most Filipinos are bilingual and that sometimes they tend to replace some of the words they already know with the other one. Or maybe because some words in english are cool. Anyway, so many reasons.....

i think being bilingual is cool and all but i've seen filipinos just speaking like this mixing tagalog and english together while they're speaking. it's not like they have to but they choose too. here on AF, i've seen it.. there are many other asians who are bilingual but i rarely see them speak both their native language and english. filipinos is a different story. i hope the majority are not like that. tagalog could be endangered if filipinos keep speaking the way they do..

here's a perfect example..i quoted this from another filipino thread.

They are simply called Filipino-Americans. They were born in the Philippines and grew up there then moved to US and continued to study and live there. Cant blame em if they were used to speaking tagalog then adopted english as a primary language.... well... at least thats my story. I wanna speak english in Filipino forum but sometimes i wanna mix some tagalog every now and then.... di ba nga mga Noypi?

i know alot of flip guys that cant speak their native tongue and only speak english thats just mainly because their parents spoke english to them when they were young and even if they wanted to learn it they say its hard to catch up. this is not a problem with only filipinos but other asians as well and sometimes i find out that i speak more english to my kids than khmer but its all good my parents speak khmer to them frequently and they seem to understand and can respond back. its alwasy best to teach them when they're young

it's not just filipino-americans but filipinos in the philippines also. i've seen the filipino news before on this asian channel where they air different asian news every hour. it's like filipinos are slowly being colonized by the US.. soon, US dollars will replace filipino pesos.

^^^Philippines have over 100 hundred languages and dialects that are spoken throughout the Philippines.

according to the CIA factbook, there are 8 major filipino dialects and 2 official languages which are tagalog and english.

question, why are there over a 100 other languages and how many filipino dialects are there?

I have to agree with you in this one, its always best to teach children while they are young about theit native language. But sometimes even if the parents didnt force their kids to teach their native language, the children still somewhat understand some of the language they hear from their parents. I speak 3 dialects only because my parents speak different dialects but they didnt teach me, i just learned it from listening on their conversations.

because there are so many different kinds of Filipinos.

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Philippines

wow.. interesting. i'm guessing there are many filipino dialects because of the many different filipino tribes? man, philippines population is huge...

well, sometimes when your country is made up of 7700 island.... theres gonna be a lot of dialects....

i didnt realize that there was so many languages spoken in the filipines, come to think of it, it does kind of make sense because of the many islands there and some groups become isolated and its only natural that different languages and dialects are form

Yes I think you would be correct. Before the arrival of the Spanish the islands were mainly populated by different tribes with their own languages. Oh and yes the population in the Philipines is huge. Far too huge.

^if you map the map by population philippines would be much much bigger than most countries. i think there's more pfilipinos than americans and the land mass of america is tens of times bigger.

as for speaking both filipino and english, i kinda picked up on english and some filipino words come to me very slowly. i guess growing and living in us kinda take taht away a bit like it or not. philippines have english as anotehr official language thus its quiet easy to to use it side by side. if you have seen the phils news anchorer for nba, they gave them a short time in american t.v. by american sports caster of nba in the nba finals last season, and the nba casters were like we could understand half of it, see they do it just like us in asia.

kasi depended kung ano ang sinasabi mo, kung minsan hindi mo na alam na sabihin sa wikang tagalog. :genius:

^that's a good reason and example

if you ask me, Filipinos have to bear with understanding different dialects plus the commonly used English and Filipino language. in my case, i can't just simply deny learning English because it is used in school. Filipino(mainly Tagalog words) cannot also be replaced since in the case of two Filipinos talking having different dialects, Filipino is usually spoken to be able to understand each other. and there's the fact that you live outside of Tagalog-speaking places like the Visayas so you have to learn your home dialect.

all in all i speak English, Filipino, Sugbuanon (Cebuano), Hiligaynon (Ilonggo) and a little Spanish, Chavacano, and Tausug. now who will blame me if i sometimes interchange my words in a sentence?

true, i mean i know these people in hawaii that can't understand tagalog and only ilocano, so most often though they lived in pi for longer time they'd prefer english over tagalog, with filipino words sometimes that they could understand

native languages? The only "native" language that has English incorporated with it is Tagalog. As we know, Tagalog isn't the native language of all Filipinos (since we have lots of native langages). Tagalog is the lingua franca(??) of most Filipinos. I've read somewhere that there are more speakers of Bisaya(fyung mother tongue lang) than tagalog speakers(yung mother tongue ulit!).

As far as I have observed, Non-tagalogs speak their own native languages fluently and correctly.

If you were born and raised in the Philippines and tried to speak to everyone in public only in English, I think most people would look at you funny. That kind of thing is looked down upon by most even though most institutions of higher education are taught all in English. 2

Sometimes, it's better to use the English equivalent of some words because dialects can be confusing..

EXAMPLE

in Pangalatoc(Pangasinense), "Wala" means "there is", or or something that is existing. But it Tagalog "wala" means the "nothing, none, null"

In Bisaya, "langgam" means "bird", while in tagalog, "langgam" means "ant".


Sometimes, I mix Tagalog with some Ilocano phrases and words because it is unavoidable.

I do not think that Filipino is loosing their native language,

In fact it is improving with addtional used from either borrowed words from other local dialects or from other countries.

Amost all the countries in the word had some borrowed languages Like in the English language.

Yeah, look at Japanese. Teburu = table, tiishatsu = t-shirt, sukaato = skirt. They have a lot of other borrowed words as well, but they consider their version now to be totally Japanese. If you say those words in a completely in English with an English accent and all people in Japan might not know what you're saying. Same goes for Filipinos if you don't pronounce some of those English words with a Tagalog accent they might not understand you as well. 2

Plus: computer = komputa

but the American English language is in itself, borrowed.. 2

losing my dialect? no way.. in fact, i find it useful in talking to people speaking other dialects. they find it amazing i can understand their dialect, i.e. Ilonggo at the same time that i'm originally a Bisaya speaker. people respect a multi-dialect/multi-lingual person.. it's probably because they'd think you've traveled most of the philippines