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Why do Filipinos pepper their spoken language with English so often, as if they are no longer fluent in their own language?
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To answer this question with my own opinion, not all Filipinos do that. The Philippines has different classes of families. Generally, we have these upper-class families (businessmen, celebrities, politicians, etc), middle-class families (employees, professionals, etc.), and lower-class families (commoners, contractors, etc.). Why am I saying this? This is because most upper-class families speak English and some of them almost forgotten the Filipino language because of the family’s reputation and they would prefer English to sound higher and richer than any class families (that’s my own point of view). I had once an experience like this when I was a personal tutor of a daughter of a politician. Most of them speak English because of the family’s identity in politics and they were trained to speak in English and not in their own mother tongue (Bisaya). I tried teaching her Filipino (Tagalog & Bisaya) but she was really having a tough time learning and understanding the language that’s why I couldn’t give her a 100% guarantee to make her understand the language very well. On the other hand, there were business families who were good in their mother tongue (Bisaya) but could not speak Tagalog fluently. It’s not new for me as long as they know how to speak on their mother tongue. For the middle-class families, which I belong to, we speak English due to our profession and not for the purpose of daily conversation with our fellowmen. My career is an English teacher so I need to speak English to my students all the time. English is a professional language in our country and it is necessary to speak with it especially if you’re talking to higher positions in the company. Likewise, English is also for educational purposes, especially for students. For the lower class families, they are actually these people that don’t speak English necessarily because their knowledge is limited. They know basic English vocabulary words and simple greetings but not as fluent as with the professionals or middle-class families. This group can understand and answer “Yes/No questions” and “WH questions” but they can’t speak fluently and grammatically correct. They would prefer to make a conversation with their own dialect. So that’s it. It’s long but to make a conclusion on your question, not all Filipinos prefer English as a spoken language because not all of us are given the opportunity to go to school and because of that, some are not fluent in English enough. Edit: Thanks for correcting my understanding of the question regarding the word “pepper”. It’s quite not common for me to use this word but I’m relieved now. Bless you, all!!!
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I agree with Carmel Nool, the amount of “code-switching” that a person does is mostly determined by their social class. Upper class people in Manila either speak “Taglish” or “English”.Middle class people may speak Taglish or English in the work place, but not in everyday life.Those in the lower classes are the ones who are the most likely to speak in “straight Filipino/Tagalog”… they may know basic English words, but wouldn’t be able to hold a proper conversation.There are several “levels” of the Filipino language. Pampanitikan – (Purist), often used by scholars and linguists.Pambansa – (National), the lingua franca of the archipelago.Panlalawigan – (Regional), provincial languages.Kolokyal – (Casual), used by everyday people, may use English and Spanish loanwords.Balbal – (Urban Slang), informal language. Code-switching as a “status symbol”, is actually not new in the Philippines. The oldest written document in the Philippines is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, dated to the 10th century/900’s, and it is written with a combination of four different languages… (Old Tagalog, Old Malay, Old Javanese and Sanskrit). The person who wrote this was obviously ‘highly educated’ because normal everyday people wouldn’t have spoken like this, it was only the Royals, Nobles, Traders and Scribes who learned foreign languages but everyone else just spoke their own regional languages. Nowadays “straight Filipino/Tagalog” is still used in (songs, historical dramas, some radio programs, church masses, speeches, government events, etc).