Some of you guys on Hive may know now that my wife is a Filipina. She was born and raised in a province of Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro. It is a fare sized island located not too far away from the mainland with metro Manilla.
Her ancestors' main language was Tagalog. She grew up with this as her base native language.
The national language of The Philippines is now called Filipino. What this means is that 'Tagalog' is still the base language but the language is now inclusive of all the Spanish and American English loan words that have gradually fazed out the more complex sounding Tagalog.
I have only fairly recently found this out myself, as the native Filipinos I have met so far just tend to refer to their speech as Tagalog. Anyways, the upshot of this is, I am actually 'officially' learning to speak 'Filipino'
I have been learning and picking things up for a couple of years now and I must admit I find it very difficult. It's not so much the vocabulary but the sentence structure and the sheer speed many Filipinos seem to speak in general conversation.
I learned a fair bit of Spanish when I was younger, so I generally recognize the loan Spanish words (although spelt slightly differently) and of course the loan english words are a given. Even knowing a great amount of the vocabulary however, it is still possible not to understand much in the flow of a conversation.
It is easier if I am just conversing with my wife or a slower one to one conversion but Filipinos in general are very sociable and friendly, you often find your self in situations with multiple people speaking at speed at once, which can be tricky but does makes you feel very included.
The structuring of Filipino sentences is what I need to improve upon the most, as it is the complete opposite of English or romance language like Spanish or French, what I've previously become accustomed to. In Filipino the subject comes at the very end of the sentence instead of the start etc.
I would like to one day gain some kind of fluencey in Filipino. I know now that many of the younger Filipinos in areas in and around Manilla often don't really learn/use Filipino themselves, often only speaking 'Taglish'. Taglish is a mixture of English speak combined with tagalog words, which is currently what I using mainly when speaking in my wife's province.
We often visit my wife's home country and town though and I want to be respectful by using the native language, even if it does not have a great deal of influence overseas. Maybe one day when I become more fluent I can post some of my Filipino conversations on Hive!
Here I am visiting the family camp -
All my wife's family and friends have been extremely kind and friendly to me. I remember on this night out some of the guys going out of their way to speak English to me, Legends!
