Speaking Tagalog
By: AJ; New York, New York, USA
I first learned my Tagalog was shit at a Jollibee in Quezon City while ordering ice cream.
Pwede bang humingi ng ice cream. The simple ask resulted in a giggle from the cashier, a waving down of her manager, and her asking me to repeat my order for the two of them. Unsurprisingly, ten year old me decided not to speak Tagalog for the rest of the trip.
What I realized then was that there was almost no reason for me to speak Tagalog in the Philippines. If anything, it was seen as pretty cool that I could speak English without a Filipino accent, so why not just speak English?
This attitude is pretty common amongst second gen Filipino-Americans, which is why, amongst second gen immigrants, Filipinos seem to have some of the worst retention rates of our parents’ mother tongue. Amongst my Chinese, Latino, or Armenian second-gen friends, well over half can speak their parents’ languages conversationally. But amongst second-gen Filipinos I know, that number is probably around 5%.
It’s a bit hard to explain why this is happening, but I’ll start with the billboards you’ll pass by on the drive from the Ninoy Aquino airport into Manila. Every other billboard is for a skin whitener. On top of that, the models on the billboard hardly even look Filipino.
Even the Filipino language has this self-deprecating attitude built into it. As a kid, I remember my relatives once discussing the fiance of one of my mom’s cousins who they had met the previous week. The guy was, apparently, a catch—good job, good family, and all that. Mestizo din siya, one Tita added approvingly.
For the Spanish speakers here, the guy wasn’t actually mixed. He was a full-blooded Filipino, but in Tagalog, the word mestizo has such a strong connotation of being beautiful that you can pretty much use it to describe someone as good-looking.
According to our language, to be beautiful is to be less Filipino.
Growing up, my family got close to another family in our church—the mom was Filipina and the dad was white. They also had three boys around the same as my brothers and I, so it would only be natural that we all got close.
We had them over one time during Thanksgiving, along with family friends visiting from the Philippines. After the party, some of these family friends kept mentioning how good-looking the half-Filipino kids were, enough to the point where Mom must have gotten a bit peeved. Guapo din ang mga anak ko, I remember her telling them as she rolled her eyes. Of course naman - obvious naman yun, her friends backpedaled.
As far as I know, the Philippines is maybe the only country I know of where it’s seen as higher status, better even, to marry outside of one’s culture. There are lots of reasons for this—the perception of having better looking children, the financial opportunity of getting a U.S. passport, centuries of colonization resulting in Filipinos perceiving foreigners as more powerful and therefore more desirable.
There isn’t, of course, a problem with this at an individual level. People should love who they love, Filipino or not.
And I’m not some sort of objective, third-party observer either. I take part in the culture in my own way too. When an older Tita asked me about the ethnicity of my girlfriend, I told her she was half-Filipino, half-white. “Ah she must be beautiful then,” she remarked. I felt a certain sense of pride for a moment, only to catch myself a bit later—there’s no reason why beauty should be correlated with being less Filipino.
Since dating my girlfriend, I’ve been speaking Tagalog more.
She only knows a handful of Tagalog words, so I teach her some new words every now and then. I also have the chance to speak Tagalog whenever we go over to Woodside, the center of Filipino culture in New York, which is just a few train stops away from my apartment. We’ll go there for brunch whenever we’re craving garlic fried rice.
One funny thing about her is that whenever the topic of us being Filipino comes up in double dates or group settings, she’ll almost always point out that I’m the only second-gen Filipino-American she knows that speaks Tagalog. She says this with so much pride that I half-wonder if I just misheard her and she’s actually telling people something else.
But no—she’s just really proud of my Tagalog.
Born and raised in California, AJ now lives in Queens, New York where he’s seemingly sampled all of the Szechuan restaurants within a 5 mile radius of his apartment. His work has been published or is forthcoming at Catamaran, Eclectica, and the Pinch Journal.
Artist Links:
Website: https://ajfrancia.com/
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Lupa Alum Shoutout: Call for Submissions Soon!
From: A.D.; Ternat, Flanders, Belgium
Lupa Pieces: The Homecoming Gift & The visit & other poems
Publication title: ManilaLitMag
Mark Your Calendars!
ManilaLitMag Submission Period for Spring/Summer 2025:
15 April to 15 May 2025
A.D. founded ManilaLitMag, a home for striking, well-crafted poetry and memorable pieces of fiction and non-fiction. While we are based in Brussels, Belgium, we embrace creative writing from all the nooks and crannies of the world.
We welcome submissions from new, emerging, and experienced poets and writers. A writer’s reputation is less important to us than the quality of their submitted work.
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