Europeanoy Talks is a webinar series hosted by the Zentrum für Österreichische und Philippinische
Kultur und Sprache, or Centro na Cultura at Wiccanang Austria at Pilipinas, based in Vienna.
Filipinos living in Europe share their experiences and discuss different topics such as identity,
culture, health and language. In the following episode, Filipino language teachers will be
talking about how to learn, to speak and to improve Tagalog. The talk is being hosted by Ralf Can.
Speaking, learning and teaching Tagalog. With me today we have Gillian from Italy, Luigi from UK
and Vincent from Germany and warm welcome to all of you. This is our third episode of Europeanoy
Talk and I am very honored and pleased to have you on board. So let's start. Vincent, do you want
to introduce yourself first? I think you're going by seniority or age. Age before beauty. Yes, hi,
I'm Vincent. I'm based in Hamburg in Germany and I came over here to Germany in 1993 to pursue my
masters and while a student I started teaching Tagalog for some of the Filipinos here in Hamburg
and yeah since then I've been teaching it regularly and I've also partnered with the University of
Hamburg to teach Tagalog as part of the extracurricular program for the ones interested here in Hamburg or
now online the rest of Germany to learn the language. Thank you. Gillian, how about you? I'm Gillian. I'm
actually from the Philippines and I'm in the UK right now doing my Erasmus Mundus masters
on multilingual cultural studies but before that for five years I taught Italian mainly at the
University of the Philippines but on the side I did teach Tagalog to foreigners mostly European
diplomats based in the Philippines. Thank you. Luigi, you're the next. Hi, good afternoon, good afternoon
or good night or good morning. So I am Luigi Crespo. I'm based in London at the moment. I am
from originally from Manila. I teach at different government agencies here in UK as well as at
University of London at SOAS. I also have my own online Tagalog Filipino online classes which I
launched a few months ago in September and it's called Ilao Limited and we teach Tagalog to kids,
teenagers and to anybody about me. Thank you very much. We want also to know you better so
could you please introduce yourself by telling us how did you become a teacher, what languages
do you speak and why did you choose those languages? Well I was back home in the Philippines
in Manila because I was born and raised in Manila in Santa Mesa. I was working at a company and I
just you know after the day-to-day grind I felt like okay I want to learn something new and right
next door was the Goethe Institute so I signed up for a German course, fell in love with the language
and how structured it was, very German you could say, typical cliche and then continued doing that
for about two years until I got to an intermediate level, worked for a German company, did a German
internship, apprenticeship so basically it really helped me improve my knowledge of the language
and then because of that applied to the University of Hamburg and my German at that time was good
enough so that I could you know go right in to the program and I think it really helped that you
know I grew up with several languages so you know English in the University, Tagalog also and then
you know Chinese at home so with that you know with that kind of experience in languages it
I guess became easier for me to learn German and while I was here in Germany you know I started
exploring the fact that maybe I could teach Tagalog and when this thing came up that basically landed
on my lap that they were looking for somebody to teach Tagalog I just took that opportunity and
went with it and ran with it and honestly what happened after that was again this interest in
the language that I was learning the language looking at Tagalog from a totally different point
of view because you know when you grow up speaking it you don't really you know take it apart and
analyze it and when I started teaching it I had to go at it from the point of view of the learner
who had no knowledge of Tagalog and who needed to find that structure and I was learning about the
language myself you know about the structure and the intricacies of the language and that fascinated
me and that's why I guess you know I kept pursuing that and you have been doing that since
Wonderful thank you. I did my bachelor's degree in European languages at the University of the
Philippines and I am specialized in Italian my minor was actually German but it was like fast
forward four years later in 2016 I was contacted by Alessandro Milani who was my student from the
Philippine Italian Association and they were looking for somebody to teach not just Italian
but also Filipino as a foreign language intended for Italians but we were pleasantly surprised
that it picked the interest not just of Italians living in the Philippines in Manila but also
people from other nationalities who had people from Spain from Austria and from the US
and many other places who actually enrolled in the course and that started my journey as
a Filipino language teacher and I must say that it's quite challenging even more so than teaching
Italians and Filipinos I'd say teaching my own language can be much more challenging as
so Vincent has mentioned growing up speaking it as your native language you don't really take
it apart you don't analyze it everything just comes out instinctively but when you start teaching it
that's when you become more aware of the intricacies of your own language and I think that's one of the
most beautiful things about teaching Filipino as a foreign language thank you how about you Luigi
I left the Philippines after high school and I went to Canada in Montreal where I studied
CEGEP which is like the college or A levels here in the UK and then went to university in Montreal
I had originally wanted to do something with history and politics and all that but at the end
of the day my mom said show me a degree so I took the easy route out meaning I studied I did a double
major in Spanish and Italian Spanish is quite familiar to me because we used to pray in Spanish
at home my mom is from Sambuanga so my relatives don't even her relatives
that side of the family don't even speak Tagalog that well so it's either Spanish,
Chavacano or English so I have a question later about learning Spanish so for me I've had the
ear for Spanish because of having grown up in a partly Chavacano household and so when I was
supposed to take Latin but they didn't offer it that term so I took Italian instead and fell in
love with the language I super duper love it it's my favorite language so when it came to actually
doing a major I couldn't decide between the first love and the passion so I took both so I did
I did that I took both in university and then I continued my studies in Middlebury College in
Vermont in the U.S. but then since the the program was a quick one for a year they didn't want to do
a thesis and I said my god I'm paying you all this money I'm not going to do a thesis so I decided
well I'm not continuing with you and I actually packed my bags and went back home to the Philippines
and surprisingly enough I ended up working at the French Embassy you know but that's life you know
uh they said well yeah because you speak French so apparently I do I do speak French so I wound up
in the French Embassy and after doing my tour of duty there for quite a long time meaning three
years which is I equate to many more years I ended up working at the Canadian Embassy because
obviously I speak French so actually my career here in the UK I do get hired for speaking French
but not Spanish or Italian so it's I always tell my kids it's a useful language although they don't
believe me so um but yeah um you know how life is in Manila 30 and single I'm out of here I decided
to do a master's in in Spain so I went to Spain and I did a master's in teaching Spanish as a
foreign language and interestingly enough my thesis at that time was how the ease and difficulties
of teaching Tagalog uh each teaching Spanish to a Tagalog native speaker and so how how many
languages do I speak so um fluently five that includes obviously Tagalog, English, Spanish, French
and um Italian and then I also have um studied a bit of German and I've studied Japanese and Chinese
Chinese I started two years ago to compete with my kids but it's not no competition at all they're
much better than me um and they laugh at me so it's it's something that's kind of nice for them
and how did they become a language teacher supposedly a language teacher of Tagalog well
I started teaching um English in Spain I won't say how many decades ago and then it's funny
because you know my degree is you know Spanish and Italian and then you you you wind up working
for the French Embassy and now you know you've got a degree in teaching Spanish and wind up teaching
Tagalog so it's never really what happened to life so yeah and the question Ralph you asked if
I'm a full-time Tagalog teacher I don't know what full time is but I'm teaching 15 hours a week at
the moment which feels very much of like a full time because I'm also a librarian um I'm also a
part-time librarian so mejo full on so every one of you what I saw or what I can read is that
somehow you reflected on how you learned Tagalog when you became a teacher is it correct so it
changed how you understood or how you understand Tagalog maybe definitely share about it how did
you learn Tagalog in the Philippines and how would you not teach it to your students
uh
how would you not teach it I mean um what's so interesting is uh you know you you learn
Tagalog because you're surrounded by it uh you hear it you know and you speak it among your friends
you see it on tv you have uh I come from that generation from a long time ago so maybe uh
Luigi and I might have something in common where in school you just had in school you basically had
all the subjects in English except for that one subject Filipino which was Tagalog right uh and
unlike now I think it's half half uh but at that time it was just English and then just that one
subject in Tagalog and uh and naturally you learn it differently because you are already teaching
basically you know the the the teaching people who already speak the language even the young kids
they already speak the language so you're just basically giving them oh this is a noun you put
it there this is an adjective you put it there but basically nobody tells you how to form a
sentence or something like that um so I you definitely notice that when you go home and you
look through the books like the grade school books you know uh you're thinking to yourself maybe this
is something I could use for my foreign students here learning Tagalog and like Luigi shaking her
you cannot it's no you cannot you cannot use it don't go there exactly it will not work it will
just frustrate um so basically what I ended up looking uh ended up looking at uh in preparation
will be all the books that were written by outsiders you could say outsiders uh uh who
who were approaching it from the point of view of a foreigner learning Tagalog and that was what was
so helpful for me because now I could see how foreigners might approach learning the language
and using that as a basis to jump off from I think for the others it's basically the same thing
yeah isn't it yeah it definitely helps for example um for example the so Tagalog doesn't have
um tenses like Roman languages do or like English does it has aspects but when I do talk about it
to my students I still say just for convenience's sake I tell them or I preface okay let's just use
past present and future as um labels so that it's easier for you to grasp although and then I explain
to them although actually it's the aspect that we're looking at and um it very much helps to
glimpse Filipino from an outsider's point of view in order to be able to teach it from somebody
who has not grown up speaking it or acquiring the language absolutely um I think Vincent said it
right when he said that the books that um you know grade school children um use in Tagalog it's not
something that unfortunately we can't use it in teaching um um foreigners because I have a set
of books um I got it really cheaply at bookmark I thought it was going to help me when I look at
grade one and I'm scratching my head and saying these are like so difficult they're using like
key verbs and all this focus it's like things that you don't teach until probably intermediate
level so I it was so difficult and sometimes I use it with my students and they still struggle with
it um although the Tagalog is very nice it's it's really um difficult and um I'm not sure if you
guys are familiar with I'm sure you're familiar with Adarna Publishing which they have a lot of
books um bilingual books and they also have um Bodhi Books which is an online um library which
I subscribe to and um but I've had students who have done um three to four courses of Tagalog
and they go um subscribe to Bodhi Book thinking that they will understand children's book well in
fact I mean in terms of confidence level your it goes down the drain because you go and say my god
I've been studying Tagalog for a year and I can't read children's book and the problem is it's
because of the voice that's used um in in Tagalog um literature and in Tagalog children's book and I
and it's funny because they've got this um thing um called teaching they have a series now of
teaching um Tagalog as a foreign language yeah and I go look at it and I absolutely flip every time
I go because I said I can't use it because whoever wrote it obviously didn't teach um Tagalog
to a foreigner because they start using all these tenses that you do tenses or even affixes that
you don't use until maybe you're in Filipino four yeah another approach needs to be um I think um to
be studied and how to teach it and even for up to children's books these are the books so it's
difficult so yeah and the problem also with children's books are not only the grammatical
aspect which might be so so complicated I mean it's okay to put in some and you just say okay
that's the meaning of that word we don't have to go into you know the specifics of it just learn
that word and it's enough to to to to be able to explain let's say the text or something but the
problem with children's books would be also it would be the topics would make would be so so
juvenile for the adults who are learning the language you know so that's one of the things
also that is a uh something that does not really help you have to approach you uh the topics
differently for adults the next topic that we want to discuss which is meaning of language
so what does it mean that you can speak language especially from your perspective as teachers what
does it mean for foreigners for foreign students and also for second and third generation especially
you are teaching the ones in europe who either cannot speak tagalog or who can understand it but
not actively have spoken it in their life so what do you think what is the meaning of language what
is the meaning of tagalog well i've always felt that language and culture are intertwined i mean
you see language reflected in culture you see culture reflected in language and a lot of the
people i would say basically almost you know i would say all the my students who are learning
tagalog it's because of that connection to the culture they want to know the culture more these
are second generation third generation filipinos you know biracial or you know even uh born of
both filipino parents but born in germany for example and and they know somehow the culture
it's like growing up between two cultures and so they know the filipino culture but they don't
really know the language or they they understand bits and pieces of it but not everything and once
you start trying to find out more about your identity and that happens you know puberty
teenagers you know at that age then you sort of feel like i want the language because i want to
know more about my culture and you immediately associate it with the language and not only that
you would hear people around you speaking tagalog or bisaya for that matter or uh you know going
home to visit relatives and then you only understand you know parts of it because it's mixed with
english but you want to know more and i think that is the reason why you know for them tagalog has so
much meaning it brings them closer to the culture so it molds also the identity yeah i just feel
like you know once i started looking at the language in more depth i felt like there were so many
things there that actually are a reflection of how we look at things so one of the things i always
love bringing up in class is having them compare the pronouns and when you go to i you he she it
and we have sia which is just one word uh it's something you know for them it's like how come
you know and then i ask them you know what do you think and they start talking about okay there's it
doesn't matter what gender maybe there's no much not much of a problem with gender equality and i
go like there you go you know so uh we are you know usually in the top 10 of the gender equality
gap equality report and that's something that for me was an eye opener when when i started you know
learning more about the language i go like you see that in the culture you see that in the language
sia it doesn't matter if it's a man or woman and you see it in our approach also uh for example
with uh people who are between genders you know what we would call the third sex and
in our culture even with a western catholic background we are a more open society i think
it's because of the way you know we approach that whole societal you know aspect of it that
it doesn't matter at least so much language is culture i mean um when we started to promote
our business we said teaching tagalog or filipino online as well as culture but when you teach a
language you teach a culture without having to make an effort so many things when you teach about
food then you see the influences that we have from spain china and our other asian neighbors
um and obviously with the grammatical structure as well as um vincent was saying
with um the third person it is also very interesting because you know the concept
different concepts of tayo and kami the inclusive and exclusive we um as well as kita the concept of
is difficult to to teach because it's new to me what is that you know you need me to you right
you know all these things that you don't think about and you know um there are days that you
say i'm so glad that i learned it as a kid because i don't want to learn it as an adult
because it is it is um it could be difficult but i think it's the way that you would um introduce
it that could make it easy because while tagalog is classed as an easy language normally it is
only easy because it is uh we have the romanized version if we um had um if it were something like
the japanese or chinese that had characters tagalog will definitely um fall under the hard
languages because it is very difficult but at the same time it is a beautiful language to to learn
and to speak and and the the the friendship that you would make um speaking the language um is um
it's something that is um how would you say has no cost at all you know something but very valuable
i mean if you're you're trying to you translate a filipino song a romantic filipino song into
english the english one no it's not as romantic it doesn't sound as wonderful i mean it really
we say so many things with the language that is uh has a more depth than how you would translate it
what what tagalog as a language means to my students might be different from your students since
um most of them are not second generation filipinos because i taught tagalog in manila
um so they're foreigners and and like i said before mostly um foreigners working in embassies
so they um pragmatically they could get by with not um learning tagalog um because you know they
would use english in um the workplace anyway and this is why i feel um a lot of admiration for my
students who actually are motivated to learn filipino out of respect for the culture and they
do tell me that in the workplace for example that they would feel more confidence um from
their filipino workmates knowing that they that they're trying to speak the language so there's
also there's also that aspect of learning filipino for them is establishing proximity
foreign
we are now in learning tagalog so the third the third um topic that we want to
talk about and jillian was talking about that the approach of learning and teaching tagalog is
different uh to how you both luigi and vincent are teaching because you are teaching
more let's say younger adults and young people while jillian is more teaching uh adults and i
was asking myself is there a difference how you teach tagalog to those groups um well i i think
luigi said that you have a minimum age of 18 and usually i also teach adults and nor
there there might be some who are like 15 or 16 but that is basically normally where i i have the
cut off because you it's very hard to uh to put all those uh different age groups into one class
so i would say most i would say almost all of my students are also adults and you you do approach
it differently um i think uh i think in a uh when you have younger students you try and approach
it more playfully without you know talking about some talking so much about you know uh the the
structure of it you just use it in certain you know simple situations get them used to that
i'm not saying that you don't do that with the adults but you can explore more possibilities
with adults when you're teaching a language you know you can make it playful you can make it more
instinctive but you could also have a certain section where you basically lay the foundations
and make it clear what the structures are um so i would say uh that's the way to approach it with
adults i don't have uh that experience when it comes to teaching young learners so so um just to
clarify um i i do teach adults um anybody 18 and over and i also teach teenagers and um children
in our classes at the moment the youngest that we have i believe is five years old so to teach um
children i think um takes a special kind of patience um and energy um and it is true it is
very different you cannot teach them grammatical structure as you would an adult learner because
such a young age probably you don't even know um what a verb is or what a pronoun is and all that
so um the key is to teach them um i believe key um sentence structures yes and also you have to
make the um the class fun so um yesterday i was teaching a class and um i was teaching them a
song for christmas um so you have to get in your Filipino singing um abilities out there in play
um so i was teaching them that and then i said well next week i'm going to teach you how to write
a letter to santa and they were saying why not today you know so basically that's
you know that's when you're teaching your teaching you're gonna teach them how to write to santa
that's when kind of introduce the i don't want i don't want and that's when you start introducing
our fantastic range of um adjectives that all begin with almost ma say that you're
all those things that you're good that you've been your mom and dad so very different way of teaching
um an adult uh versus a child because obviously an adult some of them want a very grammar focus
and want to know why is it like that as opposed to a child you tell them this is the structure
and that's it yeah so yeah yeah but even even among adult learners you would get a diverse set of
um students they won't always want the same approach towards learning the language so i
would get um students who would prefer a more grammar focused approach i want the table of the
pronouns they would say i want you to explain to me like why this is the case whereas you would get
um learners who would prefer a more communicative approach where well i want to be able to
speak the way that native speaks i want to hear how a sentence is organically constructed in
tagalog so then um as a teacher it's your responsibility to find the right compromise
especially if you have a classroom of um different kinds of learning yeah well you try to try to mix
it up also because you know everybody will start getting bored even if they prefer one approach
and then you just do that approach they will get bored so you try to bring in everything uh possible
to make it you know entertaining and to to make it more engaging yeah exactly and more engaging
exactly no uh and what i do also for example is the first like 15 minutes although it sometimes
goes over is to talk about the culture you know because i feel like it's not just about the
language it's about the culture also so i'll bring in little things about the culture and then we'll
just talk about it and then afterwards go into the language you mentioned a very nice term that
i also want to use a globalized language and we know that a lot of foreigners or it's getting to
be a globalized language and a lot of foreigners want to learn tagalog um what are the reasons why
they want to optimize their tagalog language or their knowledge about tagalog language and
another question again for this is why do many forget their own mother tongue what are the
reasons you are leading us through a minefield aren't you i think you have to address one first
yes
okay so um i don't think that you can forget your mother tongue no matter how hard you try
um the thing is um with most filipinos um i'm going to say it um my generation and vincent's
okay i think um normal filipino household you do grow up with a lot of languages going around
in my case it was tibacano tagalog and english um so you can't distinguish um between you know
what is your mother tongue because when you say what language do you dream in well actually it's
a colorful uh dream because you do dream in all languages and i do find that i do sometimes dream
in the other languages i speak so um can you forget your mother tongue no i think the case of
tagalog uh or filipino being taught um abroad by people who have left the country who have
immigrated i think there are a couple of reasons why it was not thought okay maybe perhaps the
first generation um in the 16th or the 50s the english was very much seen as you know the
language to learn so i think the filipinos who went abroad decided well it's better for art they
probably think maybe less linguistic studies back then that you know that it is uh that
bilingualism was not in as opposed to what it is now that we know that bilingualism is is very much
encouraged so i think there's that no so that's why you have all these heritage learners in the
united states so um and then obviously if you get a filipino couple because you know a lot of people
wondering well how come they're not speaking to their kids they're both filipino um the thing is
they come from different provinces so obviously are you going to teach both dialect and then if
you don't want to teach both dialect always then you go um you teach english because it's the common
language or it becomes the common language so and obviously nowadays in manila i have friends who
don't teach their children tagalog because they find that it's a totally useless language
which is unfortunate because they just speak english and sometimes the english that you speak
is not you know the western english but you know standard filipino english so um i think that is
sad you know but is it the evolution of language in a in a way it is um because some of my friends
have said that in the provinces the children tend not to speak um their dialect and tend to speak
tagalog instead because of obviously the exposure that you have from the television and media so
yeah so it's interesting that actually outside the philippines there is a lot of interest
in learning um filipino and i think that comes in stems from the fact that we've got a lot of
osw's um you have people meeting more philippinos are attracted to the culture and how warm we are
um and they want to learn um the language and obviously you've got a lot of couples um who are
um with um filipino partners and that is also a motivation for them to learn the language
so yeah globalization
well there is also you know uh that that cultural aspect of it if you are migrating uh you know you've
migrated to a different country for example germany and you know uh you first you have to learn the
language uh and so you'd like to practice the language maybe you came over uh found love and
you have a binational family uh and then you're faced with the option you have children uh and
maybe uh one parent speaks german and then you're faced with the choice do i speak to my my uh son
and daughter or or daughter in pisaya or tagalog or english which you know maybe the parent can
speak all three and then you're you're you're you have to make that decision okay what will
help my child more in the future and you would naturally drift to english so i have a friend for
example you know binational a couple and uh and then again the child is growing up speaking english
and german so the the father would speak german to the child the mother would speak english to the
child and you just don't have a third person that you can speak tagalog to the child because the way
children learn language you have to be consistent if they know that oh mom can switch to german
anyway then they would stop using tagalog they would just switch to german so you have to be
very consistent with that and then if you start mixing german and english and tagalog you know it
might not be so helpful so parents are faced with that choice and if you're a first generation
immigrant you're also concerned with integrating yourself and integrating your family into that
society so a lot of it will be look let's improve your german let's improve your english as a second
language and then tagalog maybe you can learn it later on when you're older and of course there's
the problem also that you don't have enough possibilities of finding your tagalog classes
that's also the other problem yeah um yeah can i add to that uh vincent in in my case it's very
true what you said um my husband is spanish and so um at home um he speaks to the children only
in spanish i speak to the kids in in english and um tagalog when um we first had our first child
um i was speaking to him in three languages um spanish english um and tagalog depending on the
circumstance obviously if we're in spain then with my in-laws i speak in spanish but when he
started going to school and my children go to the spanish school here in london um he had a hard
time in the sense that he was speaking three languages mixing them all up together because
obviously he had me as an example so they said you know what you need to just have your husband
speak to him in spanish and for yourself either tagalog or english um so you know for the longest
time he didn't realize that i spoke he's forgotten that i spoke spanish and that my husband um spoke
english because in their head he doesn't speak english because they always always just switch
to to spanish with him so language is you know aside from it being culture language is always
association with the parent with somebody um for example i have certain friends when i see them
automatically without thinking you switch to a language it is association yes so yes so with
the children um it is um it how do you say it um the problem with us our generation we speak english
almost like natives it's like second nature so sometimes it's so it's so much easier to
to say the english than say it in tagalog and i i'm also guilty of that
um unfortunately but yeah it is um but there is hope because i think like for me the language is
the other language i speak like spanish french and italian i didn't learn them until i was 16 or 17
and i can see that i'm fluent in them so it's never too late um to learn a language yes um yes
absolutely and you know ralph you are very admirable that you speak tagalog
despite of growing up in austria that is so so variable if if i may add to um luigi's discussion
which i find very interesting is that um one does not really forget the mother town if they do so
then it's a conscious decision but what i find is that um the situation is even more complex when
you've got multiple mother tongues as most filipinos um as is the case with most filipinos
and what i find is that um growing up multilingual you um you take decisions even
unconsciously on which language to speak depending on the context that you find yourself in
so i might um speak in tagalog with my friends um or even with my classmates during the break
but maybe during our classes i would speak in english and these are somewhat
um also impositions by um by society like we're expected to speak english in university
whereas and and these impositions can be problematic but and the point is that um
being multilingual which is the case of many filipinos you do make every day in your speech
and conscious decisions what language to use um and in what context and makes us very very
adaptable and flexible interculturally exactly because we're doing it on the subconscious level
already with language and also how we relate with other people and i think it makes us very very uh
uh you know attuned to different intercultural uh differences out there and which makes us so
flexible when it comes to you know living abroad or interacting with other people
and we know how to you know sort of like you know not only just blend in but you see
the positive aspects of other cultures and other groups of people that we deal with because
because of this flexibility that we have that is inborn you could say because we we grew up
learning different languages and knowing how to use which language and what cultural aspect in
with what cultural group we're dealing with this is why there's much i think there's much potential
in globalizing tagalog as a language because the filipino is a global citizen we are very mobile
oh we're everywhere so let's come to our fourth topic that we want to discuss which is speaking
tagalog and my first question to you is why is it fun to learn tagalog why is it fun because the
culture is fun and that's reflected in the language and i think that you pick up a lot of things
yeah and it makes you um how do you say this more flexible in terms of it will also help you learn
another language for example when i teach um the adjectives which are quite difficult because
they're all almost saying they all start with ma what i say is this is how you learn it you
associate um the the adjective with the person so you say for example uh
and then you say that way you learn two at the same time you learn the negative and you learn
two adjectives as well so you have tricks um of how to teach it and also that helps you when
learning another language you know with the antonyms and the synonyms i did post this question
to some of my students and you know uh the usual thing would come up you know it it i want to it's
fun because i'm getting to know more about the culture that i'm half from uh or or the culture
that i've you know that that has surrounded me uh throughout my life so that's one aspect of it
the other is uh you know there are some who are just in it because they love learning a
totally different language from what they know you know when we speak you know because it's
the opposite you would normally in a western language like uh you know uh german or english
the subject comes before uh whatever is being said about the subject and uh in filipino normally
it's the other way around filipino you know so it just that alone is so confusing for them
so that makes it fun and i think one other thing that uh they they notice is they're forming a
community you know they they grew up without knowing a lot of people who are like them you
know who are half german half filipino and then you're having both uh feet in both worlds in both
cultures and now they're finding more people who are like that who are like them who have you know
that background and learning the same language together i think that's also what makes it fun
and also how we you teach the language also you know we try every way possible to make it fun
for them right jillian yes so maybe jillian um what's the easiest way to learn tagalog
i would say as with any foreign language um the easiest way would be to draw from the knowledge
that you have either of your own language or from other philippine languages sorry other foreign
languages that you speak so for example when i have um students whose mother tongue is spanish
then there's an obvious connection so an easier access into the language is the lexicon for
instance since we've um borrowed a lot of spanish terms or somebody whose mother tongue would be
italian for example then i would tell them well italian and spanish are from latin and so there
would be um perhaps less evident to you um compared to a spanish native speaker but if you just if you
stop and think about it then you would find oh actually this particular term is familiar
and then it depends on the kind of learner but um i have students who would like to learn uh
the language especially vocabulary through songs so their association uh then is music and so that's
also a good way of um facilitating your learning of philippino it shouldn't be as long right it has
to be fun for them you know i always tell them surround yourself with the language you know uh
look up memes look up youtube you know when you surround yourself with the language that's how
you learn best and then we're there to provide guidance and give you the foundations to sort
of expand on the things that you you encounter out there and also um i think you have to stress the
point that you have to make language um useful if they find that tagalog is not useful um why
will they learn it you know so i think um two songs are very good um way of learning and yeah
you you build a community around it and that's the best thing is meeting philippinos
or even expressions expressions that philippinos use all the time and then they would say oh i hear
that i hear that often and then then from there you explain well we say this a lot because
and then you introduce the the grammar behind it and and it's a fun way for them to learn the
language because as um Luigi says then the language is alive it's not something that is just written
on the book yeah absolutely that's why so i think songs are so important because then um there's
this element of the song getting stuck in your head and it's the best place to get stuck
in what you're learning some of them said oh my god you played that and now it's like in my head
and i'm thinking the best place to be darling
foreign
unfortunately we have to stop in one so in about five minutes so we're coming to an end actually
our final statement which i would like to hear from every one of you what would you suggest
to someone who is interested in learning tagalog and another question that i want to add is how
can we promote tagalog as a globalized or as a global language who wants to start
um i just want to say that i think i saw your question ralph about the philippine embassy
um i'd like to say that the philippine embassy here in london is um very supportive of any um
if you ask them could you help me promote um the filipino classes they will always always promote
it um and i think um that is essential um at soas we did ask them to promote it and they
promoted every every time we asked them um with my private business with elau limited
i asked them initially to promote it and they did as well and i must tell you the amount of
business or traffic of business that i got from people who looked at the embassy
website as opposed to me advertising with filipino magazines or online newspaper
i didn't get much from that um unfortunately but once the embassy promoted my business i got so
many queries about it so yes the philippine embassy is so very supportive and we are very lucky
in that sense yeah not just from the philippine side and as i said um i've been teaching
filipino through the philippine italian association so even um even cultural centers of other um
um of different origins not necessarily philippines um are also a good platform or
vehicle for promoting the philippine language and to anybody who's interested in learning tagalog
um well there's nothing to be anxious of or scared of um the native speakers as
philippinos are very forgiving the language itself is very forgiving um one major advice would be to
to not do because as we said as we mentioned before is the basic structure is completely the
reverse of what most speakers are used to so try not to be translating all the time from your own
language it's so that's one good advice i think that i can share to anybody who wants to pour into
philippino and it's a fun language to learn there are quite a lot of uh venues or
groups that are promoting the culture and the language um you know like i said you know there
are philippino organizations everywhere we we tend to group together and we will put up our
associations so i'm sure there will be associations uh near where you live and they could maybe point
you to uh luigi to gillian to ralph to me you know and then of course there is uh the the
institutions that are doing it you know like the university of hamburg is doing it and you mentioned
the philippine embassy uh the philippine embassy here in in germany is also uh very very supportive
of that and uh they are going into partnership with the university of hamburg to put up something
um and hopefully that will come into fruition in the next few uh in next year and also that we can
offer that as part of a philippine studies program and at the same time there will be like my
extracurricular program where we're trying to get people uh you know who have familiarity with the
culture that they will end up familiar with the language and hopefully learn the language also and
we're very helpful people we will help you so your philippino friends will help you learn the language
thank you very much and i would like that you also promote your again your institutions
which what is your institution and thank you to the philipp to the philippine italian association
who is um co-organizing this event together with a centro so maybe gillian you could uh also mention
again what is your institution so the philippine italian association offers um
filipino and italian language courses to anybody who's interested and we're doing
online classes as well so um we've adapted to the the current normal so i invite everybody to
check out the facebook page and the website
yeah hi so um please um if you would like to learn tagalog whether um for kids for teens or
for adults please do get in touch with tlou-limited.com and for adults interested in the
university courses um they can contact philippine studies at soas
thank you vincent yes i am doing this um through my company lingoli so where i do business english
training but i'm uh what my company is cooperating with the university of hamburg the austronesian
uh studies department so it's either you can contact me at lingoli's de and write me an email
or uh look up the austronesian department the asian africa institute in the university of
hamburg through both uh channels you'll be able to reach me and uh and i can tell you about the
tagalog uh courses we have in store in the future thank you very much and i also want to promote
central
which is organizing this webinar and therefore thank you very much to the panelists
until next time see you see you bye bye
thank you
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