I'm pretty impressed that the little mestizo playing with my little chinito spoke Tagalowg and Bisayuh. No offense meant, I was truly impressed! I'm amazed at the idea of a true foreigner who wants his son to know and speak this land's language.
You see, I wasn't an English-speaking kid (ever). Nobody I knew at school (I went to three schools during my childhood), at home, or just about anywhere spoke in straight English. Or what we affectionally call "spokening in dollars." Classy.
In fact, my peers, who were all children of middle-class parents like I am, spoke using vernacular language. Tagalog, Bisaya, Hiligaynon. My childhood language was an interesting mix of Tagalog and Masbateno (which didn't come in handy when I had potty accidents at school but that's another story).
No one spoke English, unless we're reading books, singing Spice Girls songs, or quoting lines from Pocahontas. Just having a grasp of that foreign language was enough. Suffice to say, the kids I grew up with and I were pretty terrified of our school's speak-in-English-or-bayad-piso rule.
When I entered motherhood, I was pretty surprised to see little children speaking straight English. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but I assumed that one of the parents must be a foreigner, thus the need to learn the language. Imagine my surprise to know that both parents were pure-blooded Filipinos. But don't get me wrong; I have nothing against teaching Filipino kids English.
Globally competitive, it's what they say. I, of course, want my son to be globally competitive, too, so buy him a lot of books for his toddler library.
But what, to me, came as a shocker was finding out these same kids could barely speak a single Filipino word. Is that even a bragging right now when a child doesn't understand the language of his land? Is there shame in speaking Filipino?
