One of the reasons many people are quick to consider coming to live in the Philippines is language. Unlike many countries, English is an official language of the Philippines. (The other, just so you know is not Tagalog, as many think, but Filipino (often spelled Pilipino), which has a lot in common with Tagalog but is not the same … especially in spelling … which is an horse article of a different color which I’ll get around to writing about on another day.)
My friend Bob just sort of jogged my memory on getting this written because he just published an excellent post on the hidden benefits of learning one of the many and varied native languages for a foreigner.
Even though, especially out in provincial areas, you may travel many a mile without running into someone who knows much English … the often bragged on English skills of the Philippines, in my view only of course, are not nearly what some would have you believe … I still wouldn’t hesitate to travel anywhere with my essentially English only skills, but there’s no doubt you will miss a lot, and have a much more difficult time if you are going to live here in the Philippines and “dig your heels in” and refuse to learn/use the common language of those around you.
Many ask, “Since there are so many languages, which one would it be best for me to learn?”
Like many other questions the only correct answer here is, “it depends”
- If you already know where you are going to settle, then by all means learn the language that is common in that particular province or region.
- If you aren’t sure, (and my view is you shouldn’t make a move the the Philippines with only one place in mind … there’s too much to see and experience before “settling down” then learn Tagalog/Filipino. One big advana6ge to this is, Tagalog belongs to the same branch of languages, the Central Philippine languages, and thus shares mostly the same grammar and syntax with other languages of that family.
- If you are like me and many other Americans who know no other language and sort of slept through all your high school English classes, you might want to study more English.
Study more English? Why on earth would I say that? Well, I’ll tell you, as an American who has lived in a number of foreign countries and learned a little bit of a number of other languages, my number one problem, hands down is, I don’t really know English all that well.
When you see a sentence in English, do you consciously pick out the subject, the verb and the object of the sentence without having to stop and puzzle over the question? Here’s an example to illustrate what I mean.
John loves Jane.
Jane loves John.
Now assuming those two sentences are both true, do we know something about how Jane feels about John? Chances are you are going to answer yes, of course we do … she loves him. And, in most cases of the English language usage you’d be right. English sentences follow the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) syntax. This is almost so rigid a rule in English that we seldom give it any thought. But many other languages do not follow the SVO rule. My second example sentence could just mean the same as the first if it were in Object Verb Subject (OVS) syntax … we might not know a thing about Jane’s feelings from either of those examples, they could both just be about John.
In Central Philippine languages, it can be SVO, VOS and a lot more. Central Philippine language-speaking people distinguish subject and the object through markers within the sentence.
When my nephew wants to go to the SM mall, he’ll say “SM tayo” .. literally “SM us” … which he learned at a very early age because it was a popular billboard and TV advertising slogan. This is a very common short cut, the sentence is in the OVS syntax, but the verb, “go” is just assumed. If we are at it his house and he wants us to walk around the corner to my house he might say “bahay ni David tayo” … literally “house of David us”.
As you can see from these very simplistic examples (which are abut the extent of my skills so far), it’s a lot more than just learning the words for things. The rules for how you put those words together to communicate are often much different than common English usage, and if you don’t know the rules of English, know the reasons why you say things in English in the particular way that we do, it’s very easy to get lost when someone tells you how the structure differs in another language.
And I am not even going to get into conjugating verbs … you all remember verb conjugating, don’t you, if I say “ran” you know that the Infinitive is run, Past is ran, the Present Participle is running the Past Participle is run and so on. Or did you have to look it up, as I did … I told you my English skills are weak, remember?
Not to scare you off, but to wrap this up and point out why I think a lot of Americans can benefit from some English refresher training before they worry about learning another language, you might want to consider this … Central Philippine languages lime Tagalog and Cebuano can have as many as 60 … yes 60 forms … so it would certainly pay to have a good grounding in our own language first … or so Dave opines.
By the way, I learned a lot at this website … seemed like a whole boring textbook about sentence structure and syntax condensed and made understandable in a couple pages, thanks, Sally
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a peach.
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Dave ~ Seriously great article. Hope I am making the right choice in learning Tagalog. The rules you are talking about are something else. I can already relate to “SM us”.. I question if I will actually be able to learn Tagalog or even English again!
I tend to disagree on this, Dave. When one tries to relate or learn a language by trying it in “English” first just makes it more difficult. I know, because I was learning Norwegian like this for awhile. And if you are also weak in English grammar, it feels like you are learning 2 languages at the same time – even more confusing. I remembered learning the morse code and somebody told me that the best way is to learn the “musical tone” of the whole thing – instead of memorizing each dots and dashes for each letter. Don’t know if I am making sense here
@Ellen: I agree that in order to really know a language you have to be able to ‘think’ in that language. But I also think there’s a handicap for many people when they don’t know the rules. It certainly impinges on my Filipino abilities … I know many more words than I know how to effectively make sentences from.
Your Morse example is a good one, but consider this … if one doesn’t know the basics of structure … how long a dash is compared to a dot, how much space must be bewtween the parts of a character and between individual characters, no one could tell a “C” from two “N”‘s for example. The sounds will just be sounds without the rules that make tones onto a readable code.
It’s also a big help to know rudimentary Spanish. So many words are of Spanish origin and many common useages become clear when you know ‘beginning Spanish’.