The Mother Tongues of the Philippines
SOMA Pilipinas
A display of the Abakada alphabet and Baybayin script in San Francisco.
As a Filipina-American who was born and raised in the states, there was always a language barrier between my family members. It wasn’t until my late teens that I started to understand what my relatives where saying to me in Tagalog, mostly my mom. Compared to my kuya, who left the Philippines at one-year old, he instantly understands the language but never speaks it. Now, I speak a few phrases and short sentences of Tagalog from time to time with my relatives but I also need to learn Cebuano from my father’s side. Even he forgot most of it, considering that Tagalog is the “main” language of the Philippines.
Last semester, I was doing an Adobe InDesign project with my classmate through Zoom. She was half-Filipina and while we were working, we were just talking about our culture, food and how the connection we have with it. During our conversation, she talked about how her friend, who is also Filipina, told her about how most Filipinos don’t want to speak their native language anymore and speak full-English. According to British Council, “English has always been one of the official languages of the Philippines and is spoken by more than 14 million Filipinos.” (2015).
Even though Tagalog is the “main” language of the Filipino culture, there are approximately 180 languages originated and spoken in the Philippines and across the diaspora that shouldn’t be ignored but here are the following Austronesian languages spoken by region of the Philippines, that I am familiar with:
Visayan (or Cebuano)
Cebuano is the second-most spoken language of the Philippines and is the most-used dialect under the Visayan language.
Ilocano
Ilocano is the third-most spoken language in the Philippines. The Ilocanos reside in the Ilocos region in northwestern Luzon.
Hiligaynon (Ilonggo)
The Hiligaynon language and people are a part of the Visayan ethnic group and dialect that reside in the Western Visayan region.
Waray-Waray
Waray-Waray is another Visayan dialect and the Waray people and language reside in the Eastern Visayas, in the island of Samar.
Kapampangan
Kapampangan is the language spoken in Central Luzon.
Bicolano/Bikol
There are multiple dialects within the Austronesian languages but the Bicolanos reside in Bicol, the southern part of Luzon.
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English may be an easy language to a majority, but speaking another language has cognitive benefits such as improving your critical thinking, memory, concentration and listening. Not only that, speaking another language, especially your mother tongue, takes you back to your roots and helps you communicate with non-English speakers and building a relationship with them.
I’m grateful to be slowly learning Tagalog and Cebuano. If only I had the same mindset growing up whenever I had those language barriers with my relatives but it’s never too late to learn.