Pastor Matthew Secchi here from Verity Baptist Church, Philippines, and I wanted to make
a quick video discussing the various languages of the Philippines.
I grew up speaking one language, the English language, the dominant language, all throughout
the United States.
Whereas in the Philippines, you can grow up speaking several different languages.
My wife grew up speaking three languages, Kapampangan was her local dialect, Tagalog
is the national language, and English as well, which is the textbooks in schools are
in English and they're being taught in English.
My wife used to be an English teacher, and so it's actually very common for Filipinos
to be English teachers to people from Korea and other countries in Asia, as English
is very widely spoken here and people are very good at speaking the English language
here in the Philippines.
So let me give you a bit of a background on this.
If you're not really familiar with the history of the Philippines, you might assume,
which I used to assume, that Spanish was a very dominant language in the Philippines.
You might assume that Spanish is very similar to Tagalog in the languages that are here.
You might assume a lot of people still speak Spanish fluently.
And I would say that you would be 95% incorrect, just like I was.
There is very little.
Spanish is essentially a dead language here in the Philippines.
Chavacano is the closest thing to Spanish and there is a lot of similarity between them.
But Spanish compared to Tagalog, they're very different.
There are a few nouns that are the same, but honestly they're completely different
languages.
Spanish Allen was killed here in the Philippines and then Spain came back and took over.
And Spanish became definitely the language of the elite.
But of course there was, uh, the, the, the uprising of the Filipinos against the
Spanish and they resented the rule of the Spanish.
And so generally, uh, the local dialect they had, they would keep at home.
And so though a lot of people were speaking Spanish, never dominated the country like
you would expect, you would think it would have become much bigger and still be in
existence today.
Whereas English on the other hand has become more and more dominant as time has gone on.
And so, as I said, um, when it comes to textbooks, they're generally in English.
And so when you're looking at the younger generations in the Philippines, they're generally
very good at English, especially if they've gone to college.
Um, and of course now with American TV and American music and a YouTube and all of these
things, uh, you know, English is becoming a very, uh, dominant language and important
language here.
Um, for jobs, many Filipinos, they use English in their day to day language because
they do it to work jobs internationally, even if they're living here in the Philippines.
Um, in fact, you know, you will hear about Spanglish in the United States, which
is a combination of Spanish and English.
And honestly, I haven't really experienced Spanglish that much, even when I lived in
areas where Spanish is very commonly spoken, but Taglish is a real thing.
And what I mean by that is you will see signs here in the Philippines, part in Tagalog,
part in English and part a mixture in the same sentence of Tagalog and English.
So Taglish is a real thing.
You will be probably surprised when you're, when you come and visit here, how you see
sign after sign in English and English and English.
But of course Tagalog is also a dominant language here as well.
Now as I said, there was no national language infirmary and Magellan came here and Spain
took over.
It was about 80 years ago as there was a lot of different languages in the Philippines
where the wheels were set in motion to make Tagalog the national language of the country.
It was very controversial and it's still pretty controversial because in parts of the
Philippines, Cebuano is the dominant language.
And Cebuano was really right there with Tagalog and metrics I've seen show that more
people spoke Cebuano natively than Tagalog, but the president of the time Tagalog was
his language.
And so that really kind of helps set that above the other languages.
And so Tagalog became the national language.
There are parts of the Philippines where people are not completely confident and comfortable
in Tagalog.
They much prefer Cebuano.
Here in Pampanga, I can say that people are pretty much always fluent in Tagalog.
Um, Kapampangan is a language people speak at home with their relatives, but even
out in public, since there's a lot of foreigners that live in Pampanga and even a lot of
Filipinos that are not completely fluent in Kapampangan, Tagalog becomes a very dominant
language.
And as I said, my wife grew up speaking three languages.
And so, um, Kapampangan is the local dialect here.
Um, there are a lot of similarities with Tagalog, but there's also a lot of differences
as well.
Um, Kapampangan is the seven most, seventh most spoken language here in the Philippines.
Um, that's my wife's local dialect, and she also speaks Tagalog and English, and
that's pretty common for people.
Now if you live in Metro Manila or NCR, National Capital Region, often you might only speak
two languages.
If you grow up in NCR, then Tagalog is the dominant language there, and, um, you're
also gonna become very good at English as well.
But if you do not grow up in NCR, if you grow up in the province, you're gonna be
speaking the language of your province, which for us here in Pampanga, it's Kapampangan.
Other people, it could be Ikulano or another language.
And then also you're gonna have Tagalog, which is the national language, and English
as well.
And so it's very interesting.
Um, it's something honestly, I'm still studying quite a bit myself.
What you are seeing as a result of this is that the local dialects are slowly kind
of dying out a little bit.
If you were to talk to people that are younger here in the Philippines, they may
speak their local dialect, but at the same time, they don't speak it generally
in as deep of a level as their grandparents would, because as Tagalog is becoming more
dominant and English as well.
What is taking place is the local dialects are becoming a little bit less important.
And what is taking place in the Philippines is it is a big concern to various provinces,
and they're putting wheels in motion within the law to basically teach in the local
dialect because they don't want the language dying out.
And they're worried that basically English and Tagalog will take over, at least in this
part of the Philippines.
And as I said, it's different in Cebu and other parts of the Philippines.
And it's very interesting here how people generally speak several languages.
Spanish is essentially a dead language here in the Philippines.
It's just not that commonly spoken, but people often grow up speaking three languages.
And we have people at our church that just grew up speaking five languages because they've
got relatives from different provinces.
And at a young age, you're able to learn.
You know, you spend a summer with your cousins or whatever, you can learn a language and
pick it up.
And so there's a lot of people at our churches that actually speak several languages.
But generally here in the Philippines, everyone's going to speak at least two languages and
very commonly people are going to speak three languages.
What I would consider maybe similar to is the country of India where there is a national
language, but that doesn't mean that everybody is completely confident with that as their
first language.
It might be a secondary language for them.
This is Tagalog here is not the number one language for everybody here in the Philippines,
but people generally will be fluent in several languages.
Anyways, thank you and God bless.
Thank you.