Alyssa Bischoff, Taylor Bueno, Olawale Oluseye, Travon Peters, Kayla Poggi
Consultants: Evelyn Calderon (Taylor’s Grandmother), Jovelyn Calderon (Taylor’s Mother)
Jovelyn’s Introduction and Interview
Jovelyn was born in Tarlac City, Philippines, and lived there until she was fifteen years old. In April of 1993, her mother, father, and brother made the move to Brooklyn, New York. Jovelyn grew up speaking two languages of the Philippines: Tagalog and Illocano, and would later learn English during her time in the States.
Language can be an essential part of identity for some people. When a language is felt, it is perceived as different and distinct from other languages. This concept is known as autonomy and can be connected to nationalism. When asked if Tagalog feels like it belongs to its speakers, Jovelyn stated that she does not think it solely belongs to Filipinos. Citing Spanish influence during hundreds of years of colonization, she stated that there are a lot of Filipino words that are similar to Spanish words, which provides somewhat of a disconnect to the true nature of Tagalog.
Historicity is a particular group of people being able to find a social, political, religious, ethnic, etc. identity by using a particular language. The Tagalog language has helped bring together the Filipino community in Staten Island, New York. The use of Tagalog has helped the Filipino population on Staten Island stay united by building a common cultural identity. Filipinos in this country can keep strong links to their ancestry and communicate with one another in ways that reflect their distinct experiences through language. This connection is especially crucial for people who feel displaced or separated from their homeland. Community gatherings and churches are especially important for preserving and encouraging use of the language. It provides a sense of familiarity since we share similar cultural customs and values, especially while we are far away from our own country. Also, visiting Filipino-based events allows you to sample Filipino cuisine that is not widely available in America. Being in that setting and able to communicate in your own tongue fosters a sense of community.
Standardization is the process by which a language has been codified in some way. When a language is standardized, it means that the standard variety may be similar to one spoken variety, but is different in some way(s). Tagalog is a variety of Filipino just like how there are different varieties of English, such as British English. When asking Jovelyn about standardization in Tagalog, she stated that there are many other dialects in the Philippines and that Tagalog is one of them. Some other dialects are Illocano, Kapampangan, Cebuano, and Ilonggo. There is little to no mutual intelligibility within these language varieties, however some words might be similar. Jovelyn also stated that she thinks that they can all understand certain words of each other’s language, but not in a full context.
Vitality is the existence of a living community of speakers of a language. The population of speakers is used to determine if languages are still being used today or if they are endangered. When asking Jovelyn about Tagalog and if she uses it everyday, she responded by saying “Not so often. I do use the language when I speak to my parents. But for the most part, I speak English at work since I don’t really have any Filipino coworkers and at home with my kids and husband since he doesn’t really speak the language”.
De Facto Norms refers to the idea that “good” or “proper” speakers of a certain language represent the language as a whole. This sometimes ties into societal class as it is often stigmatized that minorities or people in poverty speak the “bad” version of a language. Jovelyn believes that there is almost no difference between the way different classes of people use Tagalog, besides perhaps the tone and intonation/abrasiveness in spoken language. Written language in Tagalog generally remains the same throughout.
Reduction is the idea that a variation of a language may be so different from the standard variety that it is considered its own separate entity entirely. Tagalog is a widely used and common language in the Philippines. When traveling outside of their region — even though most of the Filipinos speak a different dialect — they utilize Tagalog since it will be understood by others. Jovelyn explained, it’s comparable to speaking English when visiting other countries because some people will be able to understand you. Tagalog coexists with various regional languages and, in Metro Manila, it is the dominant language. While in Southern Luzon, regions like Batangas and Cavite use Tagalog but with different dialectal variations. Media plays a crucial role in promoting Tagalog, so most popular television shows, movies, and radio programs from the Philippines are originally produced in Tagalog. This allows Tagalog to serve as a bridge that connects various regional dialects.
Mixture is the idea of “purity” in a language and how much of it is mixed or borrowed from other language(s). Tagalog has borrowed words and sounds from various languages throughout history due to colonization. According to Jovelyn, Some Tagalog words are derived from Spanish due to centuries of colonization. Certain words like days of the week, shoes, pencils are all pronounced the same but spelled differently. The Philippines was a Spanish colony for over three hundred years, which resulted in the incorporation of many Spanish words and sounds. Tagalog has also borrowed words and sounds from English because the American colonization of the Philippines in the early 20th century introduced a wave of English vocabulary into the Tagalog language. As English became the main language taught in schools, many words were incorporated such as kompyuter (“computer”) or siyensya (“scissors”). Tagalog is a dynamic language that has absorbed a significant number of sounds and words from other languages due to its historical influence.
Tagalog is a very important language to Filipinos as it is the primary native language in the Philippines. It is the “unstandardized” version of Filipino (the national language), but many people still use it all the same since it is the base for the standardized variety. It is an especially important language amongst Filipino immigrants because it is likely the language they learned through childhood.
Evelyn’s Introduction
Evelyn was born in Aklan, Philippines, and lived there until December 1984. In 1985, she came to Brooklyn, NY on a working visa without her children and husband. For the next 8 years, Evelyn would travel back and forth from Brooklyn to the Philippines to support her family. In 1993, Evelyn, her husband Jose, and her children Jovelyn and Ryann would move to New York permanently. Evelyn grew up speaking Tagalog, Bisaya, and English and would later learn Illocano after meeting her husband.
Literature Review
One of the many languages of the Philippines, Tagalog, is one of the more commonly spoken dialects in the country. It forms part of the Malayo-Polynesian set of Austronesian languages, most likely being native to the eastern Visayas or northeast Mindanao in the Central Philippines. (Schachter 2018: 1) When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines, most Tagalog speakers moved to the north, settling in the southern part of the island of Luzon. Tagalog has grown to be the major language spoken in Manila, the country’s capital. With its growth, it has become a second language to many Filipinos across the Philippine archipelago.
Tagalog – being the primary Filipino dialect – is spoken by at least 54 percent of the individuals living in the Philippines, 18 million people speak it as their native language, and about 5 million speak it as their second language (Schachter 2018). Tagalog is a language that is not at risk for speakers in the Philippines because about 50,000 Tagalog speaking farm settlers have taken over Agta lands. Families and children in Agta have adapted to the Tagalog language and they use it in education, politics, and other public places (Lazarevic) . However, immigrants who came to America speaking Tagalog may not teach their children the language and then it can lead to endangerment.
Since Tagalog is native to the country’s capital, urbanization and mass media has contributed a lot to its growth and its push to be taught in schools. The dialect native to Manila is considered the standardized and “educated” variety due to its popular use amongst native speakers. Many of the words, pronunciations, and grammatical structures within the language are very similar to or even borrowed altogether from Spanish and/or English as a result of colonization by Spain, as well as English being the main language for education (Schachter 2016). The loanwords from these other languages have had a great impact on the phonetics (pronunciation) and phonology (sound patterns) of Tagalog, but the syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (word structure) of the language generally belong solely to itself.
Because of its historical roots, Tagalog has multiple dialects and regional variances throughout the Philippines. Tagalog has one rhotic phoneme, which can surface as a tap or a trill. These two allophones are non contrastive and interchangeable in Tagalog, although Schachter and Otanes (1972, p. 24) state that the trill is particularly used in “emphatic” speech.1 The approximant [ɹ] is another rhotic variant reported in Tagalog (Chen et al. 2016; Lesho 2018; Rentillo and Nuñez 2011).The Philippines was an American colony between 1898 and 1946. During this time, English became the official language and was introduced in the education system. One consequence of this is the expansion of phonemic/phonetic categories of Philippine languages to accommodate English loanwords. Lesho (2018) examined the acoustic properties of Philippine English as spoken by middle-class speakers in Metro Manila (the nation’s capital region). All speakers in her sample produced the rhotic with approximant qualities, such as a lowered F3 and absence of occlusions, across phonological contexts (e.g., simple or complex onsets, word-internal coda or word-final). More importantly, she reports that “the approximant seems to be spreading across sociolects and even influencing other Philippine languages” (p. 362).
Works Cited
Lazarević, J. INTERRELATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND ENDANGERED LANGUAGES; THE EXAMPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES. Едиција ФИЛОЛОШКА ИСТРАЖИВАЊА ДАНАС TOM VII, 599.
Schachter, P., & Reid, L. A. (2016). Tagalog. The world’s major languages 2nd Edition. Routledge.
Schachter, P. (2018). The world’s major languages. Taylor & Francis Group.
Schachter, P., & Reid, L. A. (2018). Tagalog. In The world’s major languages (pp. 852-876). Routledge.
Soberano, Rosa. The Dialects of Marinduque Tagalog / by Rosa Soberano. Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1980.
Umbal, P.; Nagy, N. Heritage Tagalog Phonology and a Variationist Framework of Language Contact. Languages 2021.
