Today, children speak English fluently than Filipino. Most grade one kids, I know, have a hard time understanding their Filipino lessons. They find it difficult to follow the “panuto” or instructions written in Filipino. ( by the way, the word “panuto”, is something I learned recently, thank you to my son’s Filipino workbooks)
With my son, it was even more challenging, since I myself, have difficulty conversing in Tagalog and Filipino. My first language is Cebuano. For starters, “po” and “opo”, do not come out naturally from my lips, since there is no Cebuano equivalent for them.
Then, I totally confuse my son with the word, “langgam.” For me, “langgam” , never meant “ant” or anything resembling it, because in my language it meant “ibon” or “bird”.
So ordinarily, when using that word in a sentence, I would not say, “Masisipag ang mga langgam'” but I might instead say, “Lumilipad ang mga langgam” .
Leaving my child wondering, as to why mom would be saying, ” the ants are flying.”
The word “bukid” in Filipino means , farm or countryside and sometimes rice field.
The word “bukid” in Bisaya means “bundok” or “mountain”.
While on a road trip, my brother Vito and I, one time, asked the name of the “bukid” we just passed by. Thereby confusing my husband and my son, genuinely.
(the thought running on my husband’s mind that time was, “since when did farmers or mga magsasaka, ever give names to their fields or farm AND why did it become of interest, to his wife and brother-in-law?)
Even if I did grow up in Cagayan de Oro City and I was speaking Bisaya, I had a very effective Filipino teacher at my highschool in Montessori de Oro.
I loved my Filipino classes, back then.
One of my beautiful memories in highschool, was when our Filipino teacher, Ginang Antinero asked us, to dramatize, all three classics: The Florante at Laura, The Noli and El Fili.
We had to make scripts. We had to assign roles to classmates -as to who should play, Conde Adolfo, Duke Briseo, Florante, Ellias, Donya Viktorina , Donya Consolacion, Cabesang Tales and Padre Damaso.
I would not want my child growing up, not appreciating, The Florante at Laura, The Noli and El Fili.
Sometime last year, we decided to brush up on our Filipino, by reading Filipino books for children. Check out the titles from my son’s collection:
trying to be Filipino, sa isip, sa salita at sa gawa…
I love what you’re doing. I’m also dumbfounded at how a lot of kids these days seem to know English better than Filipino/Tagalog. We want Tagalog to be our kids’ mother tongue and I hope we will succeed! Right now, though, I don’t collect Tagalog books yet because there aren’t many board books in Tagalog, and at 2 years old, my girls still have a tendency to mangle their books 😀
Hi Rina! There was even a time when, my son spoke like he just stepped out of a Disney or Nicolodeon show. He sounded like a cartoon character. Then “Filipino” happened in gradeschool that was when we had to do something about it -reading Filipino books was the first step. Yeah, that’s the thing with Filipino books- no board books yet and when they get torn, you would not want to remember how much they cost. Awwwwww, twins? When your girls are ready- they would love to listen to your Filipino stories.