Filipinos born in the USA and other parts of the world should learn to speak the cultural language of Tagalog or Filipino. You can feel the Filipino culture if you are able to speak the cultural language along with knowing the history, traditional food, and Filipino traditions.
JUNIOR US OPEN CHAMPION 2022
ALEX EALA
Eala is correct, Pinoy language is a huge part of the culture. You can feel and relate to the culture if you can speak the cultural language. For this reason, Latinos, particularly Mexicans, ensure that children born in the United States learn to speak Spanish, which is their mother tongue. Filipino parents should do the same and teach their kids to speak the Filipino language.
Latino parents are very good at training their US-born children to speak the Spanish language. There is a very high percentage of Latinos, like Mexicans, that are able to speak Spanish. Their parents taught them because that is part of the culture, and they are able to speak it.
One will be able to relate to and feel the culture by being able to speak the cultural language. The result is that the born-in-the-US Mexicans and those born in Mexico will be one group instead of two.
The Filipino community in the USA is divided into two groups. One group of Filipinos who are able to speak Tagalog were mostly born in the Philippines, and the other group doesn’t know how to speak the language and were mostly born here in the US.
Sometimes the US-born Filipinos will tease the Philippine-born Filipinos as being FOBS, or Fresh Off the Boat. They will even make fun of their accents when they speak English. If only the US-born were able to speak the language, they wouldn’t be divided into two groups anymore.
Most US-born Filipinos crave the culture when they go to college. They join the Filipino clubs, learn the food, learn traditional dances and history. Many US-born Pinoys want to learn the cultural language, so they enrolled in a Conversational Tagalog class. After they take the class, they are not able to practice because they have no one to practice with and the parents are not cooperating. Sometimes they want to practice with other Filipinos, but are afraid of the American accent and are not able to pronounce it well.
I hope Filipino parents here in the US start to teach their children to speak the cultural Filipino language, so they can relate to the culture more, not just by native dance and food.