Learning Tagalog!

When we found out we were moving to the Philippines, I bought a ‘teach yourself Tagalog’ book. I was already up to chapter four before we even left NZ! Oh, the motivation that I had. Couldn’t wait to be fluent within a year of arriving…

And then we moved. And the book collected dust. The first week Jenalyn worked with us, I asked her to teach us and the children Tagalog. I think she taught us that first night how to say ‘we’re going to bed now’ and that was pretty much the extent of her educator role. (Oh, we also figured out ‘thank you’.)

Life happened. There seemed to be plenty on my plate. I was disappointed in myself for not making more of an effort with the language.

When back in NZ over Christmas, I caught up with my former boss, who is also a keen language learner and teacher. She totally understood my surprise at how little of the language I had learned in 4 whole months. She had spent several years in India as a young mother, and had exactly the same experience there. Despite the fact that we considered ourselves pretty good language learners, neither of us really had the time/opportunity/energy to devote to the large task. It made us appreciate the difficulties that our students (mostly adults) have when faced with not only learning another language, but living in a new country, and bringing up children at the same time. No wonder they struggled sometimes! And they were still doing much better than I had done!

So, we’re in Manila again, and we still want to learn Tagalog. This time, we’ve got ourselves a tutor! Once a week, Lisa comes to our apartment building and has a lesson with Nigel, me and another (language) teacher from the school. We’ve had two lessons so far, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an evening of ‘adult time’ a week, we’re actually learning a bit of Tagalog. AND Lisa has an excellent knowledge of grammar! (This is not to be taken for granted, even when someone calls herself a language teacher!) Not only does Lisa know grammar, but she knows the linguistic terms appropriate for Austronesian grammar. i.e she’s not trying to ‘fit’ this language into the grammatical labels that are used for other languages. The others find some of the terms a bit tricky to get a hold of, but the linguist in me is absolutely delighted. She’s exactly what I want in a teacher!

So, Tuesday nights are becoming a highlight of the week. And my attitude is a bit more manageable. I don’t expect to be fluent after a year. I certainly don’t need to be. An insight into the language will do me for now. Language learning is one of my favourite activities, and I’m simply enjoying having the opportunity to do it.