Marunong ka bang Mag-Tagalog?

I met a Filipina in the supermarket last Thursday, and we chatted for a good hour, catching up on each other's lives. I told her that I am looking for a Tagalog-speaking baby sitter for Antonio, in the hopes that he would pick up the language. She looked at me strangely and said that Tagalog was an "unnecessary," language, because everybody speaks English in the Philippines anyway.

This, in my opinion, is a very provincial German, and sad to say, a Filipino perspective. The German concept of "überflussige Sprachen" has always annoyed me. My husband thinks the same, and has discouraged me from speaking Tagalog to Antonio. As I have mentioned before, his best friend's parents bungled up their attempt to teach Greek, German, and English to him, which gave Thomas a bit of a phobia.

The ironic thing about Filipinos is that except for the Tagalogs, the average Filipino is effectively trilingual. Most Filipinos speak their regional language (for example, I cannot understand Cebuano to save my soul), Tagalog, and English. But when Filipinos emigrate, you would be hard-pressed to find a family that passes on the language to their children. We are so willing to assimilate into our new environment, we want to get along with our neighbors so much, there isn't even any special effort in the US to market their products to Fil-Ams, even if they are the second largest ethnic group in many US States.

Fil-Ams - impossible to classify

To begin with, Filipinos are caught in some form of marketing limbo. Even the US government sometimes identifies "Filipinos" as an ethnic group apart from Asians, as if we were not from Asia. Being relatively proficient in English, we are also considered "fully assimilated" and, therefore, do not require dedicated advertising and promotions campaigns...
Even the number of Filipinos in the US has been uncertain. Because the 2000 US census, for the first time, drew a distinction between the "single race" and "bi-racial/multi-racial" population, demographers often tend to pick the single race figure when citing the official number of Filipinos in the US. What is not fully appreciated is that Filipinos are predominantly multi-racial because of centuries of contact and intermarriage with people from around Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. In fact, the Philippines is, quite likely, the only other country with an ethnic mix like the United States, with racial strains markedly Malayan, Spanish, Mexican and Chinese.

Anyhow, I believe that being in a strongly monolingual environment is not conducive to raising a bilingual, or trilingual child. I was raised bilingual, and did not learn Tagalog until I was three, but I picked up the language so quickly that I also consider Tagalog my mother tongue. I think that is the reason why it didn't work for Thomas's friend, but it worked out for me, and many other kids that I met in Barcelona.

Now, what does this language exclusion of Filipino do to immigrant children?

I have met a number of very conflicted second generation Fil-Ams, just like Augusto in the No Reservations episode featured on this blog. Some have embraced their Filipino legacy, some are disappointed by returning to the "motherland," expecting to find themselves. I met a third generation Fil-Am who considered herself American, and rejected adopting Filipino as a part of her identity, just acknowledging it as part of her heritage. I'm cool with that. I can't expect her to identify herself with a country to which she has tenuous relations.

What I'm not cool with is that almost all of the Filipinas in my area have not passed on their language to their children. Which is to me a very sad thing. A central part of Philippine cuisine is dried fried fish, an acquired taste I admit. But I love it. In one of our gatherings, the son of the Filipina in the supermarket remarked in German, let's get out of here, they're cooking that "stinkenden asiatischen Zeug."

I do not want my son to call fried fish "stinkenden asiatischen Zeug." I don't want him to not be able to speak to his cousins. I want him to be proud that he is Filipino and German. I want him to be able to identify as both. I know it will be hard for him, since he isn't Filipino, but not German, either. He doesn't have the benefit of looking like he belongs, something that Thomas and I took for granted growing up.

I don't want him to grow up confused, but what is better, growing up not knowing a part of you, or growing up conflicted because your inter-national heritage? He will end up confused whichever path we take as parents. He may ultimately reject being Filipino when he grows up, but at least I am giving my son a choice.