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Is Tagalog dying? | ||
Tags: Tagalog | Language Importance | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| fstop Newbie Canada Joined 4835 days ago 17 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 9 of 56 24 February 2011 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||
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What do you think of the Tagalog (Filipino) language? Is it considered easy for a native English speaker to learn? Maybe you think it's dying because you're having a hard time finding a fluent Tagalog speaker in the US ; ) I think that most Filipinos born overseas doesn't speak fluent tagalog but those born in the Philippines are still ok.
Here's an interview by Dr. Arguelles with a Filipino. He is a bit nervous and he is not a native Tagalog speaker so some of his responses were not so accurate. He is also struggling in language switching probably due to nervousness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8vow6-uwAw 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5140 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 10 of 56 26 February 2011 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Very interesting. What can you or anyone else tell us about Tagalo and Filipino literature? A situation similar to what you describe exists in India, yet you can find fabulous literature in any of the mayor Indian languages. Would it be worth learning Tagalo for its literature or is the best or most of it written in Spanish and English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5793 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 11 of 56 26 February 2011 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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The reality of the situation really hurts a country that has so many other attractive
attributes as a tourist destination. I have little enthusiasm for going to yet another English speaking country. Very informative, though, to know that really nothing can be done about it because there never really was a strong unifying universal national language to begin with. The thing that frightens me, for the sake of the youth over there, is -- will some of these English-only situations make for a lost generation that has no native language at all? I have a few Filipino friends on Facebook and occasionally see their status updates get replies from family members and friends. And, honestly, given some of the incomprehensible brain-pain-inducing constructions that appear in their messages, I feel really bad if that is the language they have the best command over. I guess there is a possibility that these incomprehensible constructs I have seen are perfectly comprehensible in a Philippines dialect of English, but I'm guessing that is not the case -- I have never read about the Philippines having its own English version (like, say, Singlish). Edited by parasitius on 26 February 2011 at 10:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5259 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 12 of 56 26 February 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say being "yet another English speaking country" is probably the best thing that could happen to the Philippines in terms of business and tourism! You have to remember that the vast majority of the world's population are not like the members of this forum and, sad though it may be, care little for preserving unused and unwanted languages. EDIT: I will actually be in the Philippines next week on vacation. Nothing cultural - just lying on the beach on Boracay for a few days - but I'll keep my ears peeled for the languages I hear being spoken among natives. Edited by TixhiiDon on 26 February 2011 at 11:04pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5613 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 56 26 February 2011 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't really answer this with confidence as I'm not a Lit major, or into much fiction. I did encounter in college some Filipino works so the following opinion is only from memory but I did googled them for accuracy. The more outstanding ones are mostly in foreign languages. Spanish was the dominant literary language some years before the revolution and until the second world war, and include the writings of the national hero Jose Rizal which are in Spanish (Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo). I've read translations into Tagalog in college and I thought they were good. They were of revolution-type novels. There were more works in Spanish during the American occupation but not much are read, most likely because they're inaccessible (unstranslated yet from Spanish). After WW2, English has dominated. Nick Joaquin, F Sionel Jose, NVM Gonzales and Jose Garcia Villa are the more popular ones, or at least I've read some of their works in college. I've read one of Sionel Jose's novels (The Pretenders) and I have a good impression of it, but I doubt if he will win a Nobel even if he was rumoured to have been nominated before and lost in 1999 by one vote to Gunter Grass according to this. That last link by the way is written in Taglish. And another link here in Taglish discussing why there is no Nobel awardee in Literature for a Filipino yet. There were National Artists like Rolando Tinio and Amado Hernandez who wrote in Tagalog but I don't think I have read them yet. If you like movie scripts, you might like movies by Bernal, Brocka and others. There are quite a number of good movies but Himala by Brocka was voted Best Asian Film of all time in 2008. Apart from that, most of the local language literature were pre-Hispanic and prior to the Spanish revolution (epics, zarzuelas, and local forms of literature). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5613 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 56 26 February 2011 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
That would be not just Taglish, but textspeak as well! plus, if your not Tagalog, mixed with other languages too. I would suppose they can speak/write without textspeak/textese if the situation calls for it. Remember that the oldest written document in the Philippines is also in mixed languages (Sanskrit, Old Malay, Old Javanese and Old Tagalog). People are used to the presence of a lot of languages. There is a google entry on Philippine English, but this variety of English is not really that of the native English speakers, but 2nd language speakers although it does influences the 1st. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5613 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 15 of 56 27 February 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
I learned Tagalog at school plus movies and komiks. I think there could be room for "Advanced Tagalog". In college, this is mostly about contemporary Tagalog prose and poetry with opportunity to speak and write. It wouldn't be code switching, instead Tagalog with heavy borrowings of technical terms from Spanish and English. According to Panganiban, of the 30,000 rootwords, about 5,000 were from Spanish, 1,500 from English (and growing), 3,200 from Malay, 1,500 Hookien Chinese and few hundred from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Japanese, Russian, etc. Here is an example of advanced Tagalog Reader (I didn't read it though). Unfortunately, this kind of Tagalog is almost never encountered outside of class. The Tagalog you will hear are always peppered with English words even for those with existing Tagalog counterparts. In other words, you are like a talking book if you don't inject them with a lot of English, much like how Filipinos sound when they talk in English. But you could find purer Tagalog outside of the cities and among the masses. I don't know how it would compare with advanced levels of, say, English, French, Spanish, German, Russian. Realisticaly speaking, I would agree with you that there is yet no Filipino language. Edited by Raчraч Ŋuɲa on 27 February 2011 at 6:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5845 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 16 of 56 27 February 2011 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||
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It is a sad situation, and a very confusing one for a learner of a seemingly dying language. The language situation is changing so fast that dictionaries from two decades ago can't be trusted at all, and perhaps the concept of a even a concept of a dictionary of Filipino is a vague one.
So what is Filipino? What does it mean to be fluent in the language? Knowing a couple thousand words and then filling in the rest with English? What grammar can I use without sounding strange (people have commented that some of my grammar is bookish)? Obviously I must use loan words, but should I use the Spanish one or the English one? Are English phrases considered "Filipino" if everyone else uses them?
If you read my post and others, various cultural reasons are mentioned why it is dying that don't have to do with "having a hard time finding a fluent Tagalog speaker". As far as the difficultly, the grammar is quite difficult for an English speaker and is rated a Catagory 2 language by FSI (equivalent to Russian ， Finnish, and many non European langs). But the question is really, "what is Tagalog?" If you mean Tagalog as it is normally spoken by Filipinos in the cities, on line, or abroad (as far as I know), then you really mean Taglish. And Taglish, even with the difficult grammar, is so watered down with English that if you learn a core 2,000 words or so and some simplified grammar, you're good; so it's obviously easier. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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