Page 438 - Tagalog for Beginners: An Introduction to Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines

Professor He then traces Jason’s experience as a CHL learner.
Here I attempt to trace a similar life span of learning—the language acquisition
experience of the activist Filipino Heritage Learner (FHL).

Our first question: What do FHL learners know? Drawing from He’s framework,
I ask the below to ascertain a heritage learner’s proficiency:
Phonology: Do they have Filipino pronunciation? How are they influenced by the
other languages spoken at home?

Morphology: Do they understand how Filipino words are formed, especially the
various affixes?
Syntax: Is grammar conscious to the FHL? Is their spoken speech different
from their written texts?
Pragmatics: To what extent are they aware of different speech styles, genres,

speech acts, speech events and their social distributions and
functions?

For second-language learners, everything needs to be taught; however, it is more
difficult to define the proficiency level of the FHL without a proficiency test.
Through observations, three in-depth interviews and a focused group discussion,

I have come up with a composite character whom I will call Margarita Louella, with
the nickname Margie. Why was she named Margarita Louella? Well, she was born in
1973, the year that Margarita Moran was crowned Miss Universe. Her mother’s
name is Lourdes and her father’s name is Joel, thus the name Louella.
In our attempt to understand the activist FHL, let us turn to Margie Louella, our
composite character based on my interviews with six FHL learners.

Margie was born in the U.S. She grew up in either a nuclear household with
parents and siblings or in a single-parent household. Her mother speaks to her
grandmother in Visayan, her parents speak to each other in Filipino, but they speak
to Margie in English and the code-switching Taglish (or Tagalog English). There are
three possible reasons for this use of Taglish: the neo-colonial relationship between
the U.S. and the Philippines resulting in a colonial way of thinking among many
Filipinos; the hegemony of the English language in the Philippines with language
underlining disparities in class and status; and discrimination in the site of migration
because of Filipino accents that mark the person’s ethnic identity and otherness.

At four, Margie’s mother would speak to her saying, “Let ninang make subo
you.” Ninang is the Filipino word for “godmother” and subo, the verb for “hand-
feed,” is made English by attaching the English verb “make.” Her mother Lourdes
code-switches because of the following: she is a product of bilingual education; as a
child, she was fined for speaking Filipino in school; and in speech classes, she had to
repeat over and over “This is an apple. This is an apple...” to get the perfect