Language Is Identity: Why Every Fil-Am Family Must Keep Filipino Alive
Language Is Identity: Why Every Fil-Am Family Must Keep Filipino Alive
A nine-year-old kid in a Chicago high-rise made a promise to his sister in 1976: "We can't forget our Tagalog." Fifty years later, the stakes have never been higher for the Filipino-American diaspora.
In the fall of 1976, a few weeks after my sister Joy and I started school at St. Sebastian on the North Side of Chicago, I told her something I had been carrying since the moment our plane touched down from Manila. I was nine years old. She was younger. We were living with our parents and Lola Rosita in a high-rise apartment at Warren Barr Tower in Lakeview, and I said it simply: "Joy, we can't forget our Tagalog."
I was already noticing. The few Filipino kids at St. Sebastian did not speak Filipino. Either they had arrived in the United States very young or had been born here. Their Tagalog was gone — and with it, something I could not yet articulate but could absolutely feel. A door had closed for them. I did not want that door to close for us.
Fifty years later, that instinct has only deepened into conviction. Language is not a decorative accessory of identity. It is the operating system. It is how we process love, grief, humor, and faith. It is how our ancestors encoded their understanding of the world — and it is how we pass that understanding forward. If identity is the house we live in, then language is the foundation that holds everything up.
Tagalog is the fourth most-spoken non-English language in the United States, with approximately 1.77 million speakers — behind only Spanish, Chinese, and French. In California, Nevada, and Washington, it ranks even higher. San Francisco officially recognizes Tagalog as one of three city languages alongside Spanish and Chinese. Yet studies show that by the third generation, only about 10% of Filipino Americans speak it with confidence. The language is everywhere — and disappearing at the same time.
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Kalooban
(kah-lo-OH-ban)
Literally "innermost self" — the seat of will, intention, and character. In Filipino psychology, kalooban refers to the deepest interior of a person, where authentic feeling and moral compass reside. Unlike the English word "will," kalooban carries the warmth of communal context: your kalooban is not just about what you want — it is shaped by your relationships, your family, your kapwa. When an elder says "Nasa kalooban mo 'yan" — "That is within you" — they mean something far deeper than mere willpower. They mean your soul knows the answer.
The Vessel of Ancestral Wisdom
Language is a time machine. When we speak Tagalog, we are not just making sounds — we are channeling the wisdom of ancestors who navigated the archipelago long before the first galleon appeared on the horizon. There are concepts in Filipino culture that simply do not survive translation. Take kapwa — often rendered as "fellow being" in English, but that barely scratches the surface. Kapwa is the recognition that you and I share a common inner self. It is the reason a Filipino stranger at a grocery store in Vallejo or Carson or Jersey City will smile at you like a cousin. It is a worldview baked into the grammar of how we relate.
Or consider bayanihan — the spirit of communal unity, famously symbolized by neighbors carrying a nipa hut on their shoulders. You cannot fully grasp bayanihan in English because English has no single word that fuses volunteerism, duty, kinship, and joy into one concept. The closest you get is "community spirit," which sounds like a PTA meeting. Bayanihan sounds like home.
When we lose the language, we lose these specific, nuanced maps for navigating the human condition. We lose the texture. A child who grows up hearing kapwa — even imperfectly, even mixed with English — absorbs a relational worldview that no sociology textbook can replicate.
The Numbers That Should Wake Us Up
The importance of language to identity is not just a sentimental notion — it is a documented global reality. A 2024 Pew Research Center study surveying over 28,000 people in 23 countries found that a median of 91% say speaking a shared language is important for being considered a true member of a nation. Language outranked birthplace, customs, and religion as the most valued dimension of belonging. In country after country — Indonesia, Hungary, France, Kenya — the consensus was overwhelming: language is the cornerstone.
Now hold that against the Fil-Am reality. Tagalog may be the fourth most-spoken non-English language in the United States, but that headline number hides a generational crisis. Research from the UC Berkeley Center for Philippine Studies indicates that approximately 55% of second-generation Filipino Americans understand Tagalog — but only 27% speak it with confidence. By the third generation, those numbers collapse to 25% and 10%. The language is not dying in the Philippines. It is dying in our living rooms in Daly City, in Eagle Rock, in Waipahu, in Virginia Beach.
— NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind (1986)
How Language Shapes How We Think
Linguistic relativity — the idea that the language we speak shapes the way we think — suggests that Tagalog speakers perceive the world differently than English-only speakers. English is structurally individualistic: "I did this." "I want that." The subject acts upon the world.
Tagalog is structurally relational. Our verb system does not prioritize the actor the way English does — it can foreground the action, the object, the recipient, or the context. When a child says "po" and "opo," they are not just being polite. They are practicing a worldview that embeds respect, social awareness, and humility into every sentence. They are rehearsing a way of seeing that prioritizes the relationship between people — not just the individual speaking.
For a kid growing up in the fast-paced, individualistic rhythm of American life, having what you might call the "Tagalog brain" offers a second operating system. It provides a way of processing reality that values the "we" as much as the "me." That is not a weakness. In a country where loneliness is an epidemic, it is a superpower.
The Ghost Identity
What happens when a language dies in a family? It is not just vocabulary that disappears. It is connection.
When a grandchild cannot speak to their Lolo or Lola in their native tongue, a silence settles between the generations that no amount of Google Translate can fill. The stories of the old country — the hardships of immigration, the humor, the pearls of grandmotherly wisdom — get filtered through translation that strips them of their emotional weight. The punchlines stop landing. The prayers feel borrowed. The lullabies become foreign songs.
I think about this constantly. My late wife Tess was from Valencia, Bukidnon — she spoke Bisaya in addition to Tagalog. Our household was multilingual by nature, not by design. Our three kids — Veronica, JianCarlo, Francesca — grew up hearing both. That richness was never a burden. It was a gift. It meant that when Tess's family called from Mindanao, the kids could follow along. It meant that when we gathered with my side — Tagalog speakers from Marikina and Bicol — the conversation flowed without a translator in between.
Language loss produces what I call a "ghost identity" — a feeling of being connected to a culture you cannot fully access. You know you are Filipino. You feel it in your bones. But when you cannot speak the language, you are a spectator at your own reunion. You are watching your heritage through glass. That cultural mourning often does not surface until adulthood, when the realization arrives too late: I should have learned. Why didn't anyone teach me?
By keeping the language alive now — imperfectly, bilingually, in whatever form we can — we are saving our children and grandchildren from that heartache.
The Tayo-Tayo Bond
There is a specific kind of magic that happens when two Filipinos meet somewhere in the diaspora — a Costco in Stockton, a hospital break room in Houston, a bus stop in Melbourne — and exchange a few lines of Tagalog. It is an instant bridge. An unspoken recognition: Tayo-tayo lang — just us. A sense of safety and mutual understanding that transcends professional titles, immigration status, or how long you have been away from home.
For young Fil-Ams, the struggle for belonging is real and well-documented. They often feel too American for the Philippines and too Filipino for certain American spaces. Fluency in Tagalog — even conversational fluency, even Taglish fluency — resolves that tension. It gives them an undeniable claim to their heritage. It moves them from being observers of their culture to active participants in it.
What Families Can Do: Practical Steps
Normalize the "Nosebleed"
In the Philippines, we joke about getting a "nosebleed" when struggling to speak perfect English. In the diaspora, we need to flip that script. It has to be okay for kids to stumble through Tagalog. To mispronounce. To mix languages mid-sentence. Consistency matters more than perfection. A child who hears "Kumain ka na ba?" every single day will eventually internalize the rhythm of the language — even before they can conjugate a single verb.
Embrace Taglish as a Bridge
Taglish — the natural blend of Tagalog and English — is not a corruption of either language. It is a living, breathing adaptation. It is how millions of Filipinos worldwide actually communicate. Linguists increasingly recognize Taglish as a legitimate bridge to deeper fluency. For a Gen Z kid in Cerritos or a college student in Chicago, Taglish makes Filipino feel accessible, modern, and theirs — not a museum artifact.
Tie Language to Lived Experience
We do not learn languages in a vacuum. Teach a child how to order at a Filipino restaurant in Tagalog. Pray together in Filipino. Watch TFC or GMA Pinoy TV and talk about what you saw — in Tagalog. When language is connected to food, laughter, faith, and family, it sticks. It becomes muscle memory, not homework.
Let the Elders Lead
Lolo and Lola are the most powerful language teachers we have — and they are not getting younger. Every conversation a grandchild has with an elder in Tagalog is a deposit in a cultural savings account that pays dividends for generations. Create the space for those conversations. Put the phone down at family gatherings. Let the old stories flow in the language they were meant to be told in.
The Thread That Connects the Diaspora
The Filipino diaspora is a global network — 10.2 million Filipinos living in over 200 countries and territories. Whether you are in Vallejo, Pasadena, Winnipeg, Dubai, or London, Tagalog is the thread that connects the pearls of the diaspora. It is what makes a Filipino wedding in Melbourne feel like a Filipino wedding in Pangasinan. It is what makes an OPM song hit the same whether you are in a karaoke bar in Daly City or a flat in Jeddah.
If we allow that thread to snap — if we let the language die in our families while the rest of the world moves on — we lose more than words. We lose the connective tissue of a global community. We lose the ability to come home — not just physically, but through the words we speak at our dinner tables.
A Promise Kept
I was nine years old when I made that promise in a Chicago high-rise — but I knew exactly why it mattered. I was a very proud Filipino, even at that age. By second grade, I was already reading and writing about the Katipunan, about Andres Bonifacio and JosĆ© Rizal — not from any school assignment, but from the history books in my titos' and titas' bookcase, books meant for sixth graders and older that I devoured on my own. Rizal was one of my heroes. And Rizal had something to say about language that burned itself into my young mind: "Ang hindi magmahal sa sariling wika, daig pa ang hayop at malansang isda" — "He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and a smelly fish." I did not need anyone to explain why our Tagalog mattered. I had read it in the words of our national hero. I felt it in my kalooban. Although we were not rich, I was very proud to be a Filipino. I was very proud to be a Perseveranda. And I was not going to let a move across the Pacific change that.
Fifty years later, that promise stands. I say it now to every Fil-Am parent, every tito and tita, every Lolo and Lola reading this: Speak it. Teach it. Live it. Stumble through it. Mix it with English if you have to. But do not let it go silent.
Because when we speak Filipino, we are not just talking. We are telling our ancestors that their journey to the United States was not an exit from their culture — but an expansion of it. We are telling our children that their identity is not a single note but a full chord. And we are telling the world that 4.6 million Filipinos in the United States are not about to forget where they came from.
Hindi natin kayang kalimutan. At hindi natin dapat.
We cannot forget. And we must not.
Pew Research Center — "Language and Traditions Are Considered Central to National Identity" (January 2024)
Wikipedia — Tagalog Language (U.S. Census Bureau data: 1.77 million speakers)
Wikipedia — Filipino Americans (language retention, demographics)
Kylian.ai — Tagalog Speakers Worldwide: The Numbers and Impact (UC Berkeley data)
University of Pennsylvania — Filipino Language and Culture
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)
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J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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