Anong Language Hablas?

By Devon

To start out I will explain the title of my essay. Anong is Tagalog for the word what, language is English, and hablas is Spanish for you speak. When put together it means what language do you speak? After thinking of the topic of the essay for awhile I realized that the ways I speak with my family, students, co-workers, and friends are all different.

When I am with my family I speak a mixture of English and Tagalog, which many people call Taglish. The reason why this is spoken in my Anglo-Saxon family is because my wife is from the Philippines. I also have two brothers who married Filipinas. Because of this mixture of cultures both English and Tagalog are used in my family. I watch movies and television in both languages, and I also listen to music in Tagalog.

At work I am around children ranging from five to eleven years old and I speak to them as an elementary school teacher should. I never speak to them as my close friends or about all my personal beliefs. I teach them to respect adults and other manners. I even get to teach the Spanish speaking students about having good manners. I learned Spanish while serving a mission and even as a missionary I had to conduct myself with extreme professionalism. But among missionaries we had our own way to talk and our own terms. For example we called new missionaries greenies.

I noticed that when I am with my friends I speak almost as if I am with my family, but I still have a certain way my friends and I joke around. I noticed that I use more slang terms with my friends than I do with my family. For example, I have friends from Saudi Arabia and when we see each other at the gym we call each other beast in Arabic. I would not use this term with my family because it would have no significance to them.

Most individuals have their own way of communicating too. I have heard the way my brothers speak with their friends and they do not speak to me in the same way. I feel that it is the comfort level that a person has which allows him or her to speak a certain way. One way I learned this was when I told a rude joke to my bishop at church. He then told me that it was not polite so I learned that there are some things that can and cannot be said to certain people.