PI Day 108- Tagalogin Mo Na!! (Say it in Tagalog Already!): My Life as a PLL

Like any good ELL teacher, I will provide for you a list of characters and vocabulary that will be helpful for you to do this reading:

• Laloo/Lola Eling: My mother’s mother
• Lola Lydia/Lyds: My father’s mother
• Yaya: Babysitter
• Nen: My family’s yaya of 23 years
• Tiangge: flea market/open market
• Pasalubong: Gifts for family at home
• OA: OverActing, over dramatic, extra
• Ma-OA: To be OA
• Tagalog/Pilipino: National dialect of the Philippines
• Kapangpangan: Dialect specific to certain provinces in Northern Luzon, primarily Pampanga and Southern Tarlac
• Ilongo: Dialect spoken in the southern island province of Iloilo
• Lambing: tenderness

So, is this what it feels like to be a PLL (Pilipino Language Learner)?

In the education world, Immigration and Language Acquisition were and still are hot, trendy topics. How many professional developments and seminars we had to attend about this topic, I can’t even count anymore and of course, for very good reason.

In ed school, you learn about the cognitive, emotional, and social issues that ELLs may experience when encountering a new culture, language, and school –the intricate needs of every individual student based on their linguistic ability and experiences. If you’re in a halfway decent program, you are taught that people don’t acquire language in a vacuum and boy am I learning how true that is!!

As I struggle to learn my family’s languages, I keep in mind all of the English Language Learners that I taught at my high school.

In my own moments of linguistic struggle and occasional exhaustion, I remember times when I saw students crying with the effort of learning a new language and living in a completely new place, when my students would treat someone who spoke the same language like a breath of fresh air or a sip of cool water in the dessert, when a student would trip over a word or search endlessly for the right word to say, when a student would be asked to repeat the same word/phrase over and over again because the listener didn't understand, when a student would overcompensate and use intricate words in the wrong way, or when a student got so tired of trying he or she would just put his or her head down. I know some of that feeling now, only some. Sometimes you want to shut your brain off when it’s too much, sometimes your brain is speeding to catch up with what’s going on around you –you have just enough understanding to stay interested in what’s going on. I feel my brain constantly moving in those moments.

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I listen a lot and don’t talk too often (I know, would you believe it?). I sleep on Laloo’s pull out couch in her room. The tv is right next to my head. Laloo lets her “dramas” lull her to sleep with volume on high, so the Tagalog dialogue is blasting next to my face and I’m listening to this Pinoy telenovella unfold before my eardrums. Drama people, drama. But seriously, it’s good listening practice for me. If I am really getting it, I start to imagine the scene that’s playing on the screen and I find my mind trying to keep up with the story even when I’m kind of trying to fall asleep.

When I’m with my two families, I sit, savor, and try to soak in the demanding, staccato tones of my mother’s northern dialect, Kapangpangan, and the sweet, sing songy southern Ilongo dialect of my father’s family. In my listening, I recognize when I use those tones in my English. My mother’s ancestors push argumentative, emphatic tones out of my mouth when I am in a heated discussion or am just plain excited about something important to me –education, religion, common sense, lol. I speak imperatively, excitedly -sometimes leading people to think I am angry or annoyed.

“Don’t yell at me!” Nora exclaims.

“Ay, sorry! That’s just how I talk,” we always apologize.

Kapangpangan Castro ancestors

When I am in love, consoling, or empathizing, my tones become gentle waves, similar to the waters surrounding my father’s island people. “Lambing” (tenderness) is how my yaya describes their tones –on some “Let me wash you over in my love, love you down,” type R&B music.

Contemplating the waters of Iloilo for the first time, January 2010

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As my ears are perked to the dialects around me and to the different accents Tagalog is spoken with, I try to produce in Tagalog/Pilipino. At Church, song and prayer words are projected on a large screen and I find I can’t fix my mouth to say some of the words on the screen. Try saying 'ipinagbubunyi' or 'pinasasalamatan' while keeping up with the song or prayer. Ouch, that just made my jaw hurt.

Words and sounds that are so natural to folks here, I trip over and say slowly, like a five year old learning how to read. There are moments when I feel my mind and my mouth trying to meet. I want to respond in proper Tagalog, I really do I just don’t know how yet! I want to ask questions, but don’t know the structure. I want to talk to you.

Sometimes I need to take breaks and revert back to English, which is easy enough here. But yesterday, as I was speaking to MyHanh, I realized that even some of my English has escaped me. While I’ve been writing a ton, I haven’t been speaking to many in deep, philosophical English, the way I would at home. I grasp for SAT words I implemented in my everyday vocabulary to no avail.

It’s challenging, confusing and awesome all at once. My brain is often in high gear. Speaking, which most of you know is very easy for me, becomes painstaking. I search for the right words, the correct sentence structure, and mangle my tenses.

On the rare occasion that I do have words they can come out inappropriately –sometimes disrespectfully, in the wrong tone, using the wrong synonym, or with the wrong accent. I'm not familiar with formal language, the only models I had were my parents and their close friends or stereotypical Pinoy movies -too casual or too ma-oa (overacting) respectively. There's no way I can use that tone with Lola Eling whose hearing is getting worse and whose best language is actually Kapangpangan, a dialect I cannot produce correctly at all! I can just barely make out the gist of a story when the women are speaking Kapangpangan around me. Meanwhile, when my father’s family breaks out in Ilongo I may as well write my own cartoon script to match their facial expressions and gestures I know so little.

Everything moves so quickly that sometimes I can’t hide my dismay and emotions. I am not in control. I remember every time a kid seemed to be disrespecting me with their tone or facial expression. It wasn't about me, it was just frustration with the situation. Now it's my turn... My face is blank and my eyes shift, searching for escape, a pass or for the words in my limited air dictionary. Nope, the word’s not there. Maybe next time. I gotta remember to look that up when I get home.

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Sitting in the car with Eric, Lola Lydia’s driver on the way to Makati the traffic is endless. I'm wishing I knew more. I am the queen of convo at home.

I would know how to make this hour long commute seem like a 15 minute drive. Little things like, “Wow, traffic is so bad,” takes me forever to translate in my head, I just don't have the words. I'm dying to ask questions about the roads, the buildings, the businesses, the part of the city we are in, the reason why traffic is so bad right now. This is so not happening. Words as simple as ‘slow’, ‘that’, and ‘are’ present themselves as barriers. I know I know them, but finding them and then putting them in order…errmmm…? Then I get confused with all the Tagalog, Kapangpangan, and English swirling in a cranial vortex, which makes translation triply long. By the time I think I get it it's too late to even try again. The moment has passed. Eep!!!

He asks me a question, “Dyan kayo sa Greenbelt kahapon?" Were you there at Greenbelt yesterday?

I confuse ‘kahapon’ (yesterday) with ‘tonight’ and answer inappropriately:

“Ah hindi, may klase si Ben mga 6:30, dyan sa Jupiter.” Ah, no, Ben has a class on Jupiter St. around 6:30.

Womp, womp. Try again. I think we’re both sitting there trying to figure out what just happened. His response tells me I said something off and it takes me 5-10 minutes to figure out that I've totally gotten the word wrong and that Eric simply humored my error. Lol. I don't even know how to say that I understand that I messed up. Moving on...

Eric keeps trying to make small talk and keeps saying the word ‘tapat.’ I’m not sure what it means, though. I’ve heard it before. I come home and look it up. I thought it was a preposition. Apparently not. Its primary meaning is “honest” but can be used approximately 46 other ways depending on its context. Ummm, yeah, good luck with that!

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It’s not all losses here, though. As a student athlete, I learned that you play with people better than you, worse than you, and at your level in order to truly become a better athlete. I’m trying to play with the different levels here. Spent the day at the tiangge last Wednesday shopping for pasalubong with my brother. Of the three children in my family, my Tagalog is most intuitive. My parents spoke it to me the most as a child. I heard it more.

So I take the lead, haggling, trying to fake it, copying the demanding tones of my world famous haggling Tita Cecile. I force my eyes to look as confident as if I was haggling for jewelry at a New York City street fair. With effort, I remove all uncertainty out of my tones and demand a lower price for this, “or else my money and I are moving on.” In general, the trip is a success. I’m able to haggle down all our purchases and even go back and forth with one vendor for more than one round. I’m sure I could’ve gotten 50 pesos lower for each purchase, though. Maybe next time.

I come home and pass out like I was lifting weights –my linguistic muscles sore with the weight of the new exercises. They come so quickly and with little support.

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It's amazing how trapped into silence one can become with fear and lack of skill. At home my silence was my choice, a luxury. But here, my lack of ability could become a cage of loneliness if I let it. And imagine I didn't have family here, I'd feel even more isolated. Back home my words are a foundation for my relationships and my identity. If you know me, I love by sharing myself through my words and actions. I tell stories. I communicate emotions and experiences. I listen to a friend’s words and mirror them back and add my piece as well as I can. My words help me engage and relate with other humans, their spirits, and their souls.

At home, my language capabilities empower me and are a huge source of social capital. I can read, write, and speak fluently for a number of purposes and can code switch depending upon the context. I’ve gotten far in life because I was taught at an early age how to use my words. Here, I have less of those words. I have less understanding. How can I tell you I care? I want to listen. I want to know about what’s going on around me but first I need that foundation.

Seems fitting that this time where I relinquish my role as an “expert” or as a professional is accompanied by these silences and this need to constantly be listening in order to build that foundation. The cycle will continue while I’m here. Listen, learn, apply rule, and produce. I’m hoping to reach a decent level of Tagalog fluency by the time I leave here. Even if it’s just BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills for all you non-ed heads), I’ll be happy.

I'm grateful for the opportunities I had to teach so many ELLs at my old high school. They taught me how to be a good learner in the world of language acquisition!