I Am Finally Fluent in Hiligaynon!
So, ever since my last attempt at blogging, I have been pondering on what to do for my next one. Sometimes, I wish I had a good working camera because spilling my thoughts out would be much easier if I could actually talk and talk in some videos of my own. For now, though, this will not be feasible, so I will have to stick with writing blogs.
Not that I oppose it or anything. I love to write, and I would rather do this than most other things, if I’ll have to be quite honest.
Thinking of what to do and what to write about was my biggest dilemma for the past few days. I mean, what am I going to write? I had ideas for a movie review, a book review, this and that, but I had to research a lot about how to do these first, not to mention the research I would also have to do, about the media material in question. My main goal for now was to get something out, and soon. I had to think fast.
While munching on a Jollibee Tuna Pie and browsing on YouTube for Duolingo memes, I realized I did not need to think at all. Why not write about something I do every day?
Ladies and gentlemen, today, I will be telling you about how I learned Hiligaynon.
I know I probably don’t count because I have been exposed to speakers of Hiligaynon my whole life, even before I moved to Iloilo. My mother grew up in Roxas City, and attended high school up to medical school in Iloilo City, and thus could speak Hiligaynon far better than I can. Even my grandmother went all the way from Bicol to living in Roxas City, and eventually became so adept at the Hiligaynon language that she was even speaking it better than most locals, which is a story that my mother and her siblings love to repeat. I have been around people from Iloilo, Capiz, and Bacolod for all my life, and thus I have basically had lifelong exposure to Hiligaynon, but this is still a story I want to tell you guys about. I may not have been a blank sheet before acquiring this language, but I struggled and learned so much, making this a journey I want you all to hear about. Learning Hiligaynon opened so many doors for me, and even contributed to my ever-growing, never-stopping interest in languages. In fact, I am still learning new words up to now. Through Hiligaynon, I was able to read more text and discover worlds of knowledge and culture in the Panay-Negros sphere, and also meet, talk to, and interact with so many people.
I guess that is one reason why my love for languages festered continuously within me. It is really cool to talk to people, and get to know them and hear their stories. It is an entirely different, and frankly more phenomenal feeling when you talk to someone else in their own language, and hear them talk about their lives and what colors their days. There is just so much going on in there that I cannot even put into words, for every language and culture is just so diverse, rich with history pumping through their veins–every word, every sentence, every definition. With every language, there is a new story to tell. Some might even say that one’s personality can change depending on the language they speak. I have not really been looking much into it, but when I did bring it up to my friends, they did say that I sounded “cuter” when I spoke in English, that my voice sounds stronger in Hiligaynon, and that my tone is “responsible” in Filipino.
Currently, I am studying Swedish, and I am not yet sure of exactly how I sound when I attempt to talk, but I just hope I do not sound like I am going to punch someone in the face!
Just kidding.
I started really learning Hiligaynon when my family and I moved from Quezon City to Iloilo City at the tender age of nine. My brother and my sister were actually so much younger, right in their peak child development years when this happened, so they picked up the language as though it was their mother tongue. However, as for me, the first few years felt like a nightmare.
See, my mother was not open to me learning to speak the language at that time, because she thought it would ruin my crisp Tagalog accent, brought on to me by having lived in a Tagalog-speaking city for almost a decade of my life. I followed this rule religiously until sixth grade. Still, for the first two years, I was slowly starting to pick up words from the people around me, such as my classmates. Hiligaynon was not so different from Tagalog, which is probably how I was able to pick it up faster, but it definitely still had a learning curve. Even though I did not really try to speak it, I made deductions that this word meant that, or that a person should not use this word but instead that, and so on. Eventually, I finally began to understand what my peers were saying. I did not yet have the confidence to speak in Hiligaynon, but the fact that I was starting to comprehend my classmates’ rants and giggles was surely a good start. In fact, I giggled a bit myself one time, when I heard some girls making fun of me within earshot, talking to each other in Hiligaynon because they thought I could not understand.
They were wrong, and I understood they were calling me an idiot. Of course, they were still wrong.
At age eleven, I finally started to open up to actually speaking in Hiligaynon. The moment it happened, I was sitting on the bleachers with my friends, and they were speaking in a mixture of English and Hiligaynon. Up until that point, I still had not said anything in the language, and they honestly thought I would not ever actually attempt to do so, and that was fine with them. They were very accepting friends, and I was their little buddy who only spoke in English and Tagalog. At some point, something was said, and I wanted to reply in Hiligaynon for once. It actually took me two full minutes just thinking about what to say and how to say it, even though I knew I only needed to blurt the words out. Still, I was scared. Eventually, though, I was able to say my first ever sentence in Hiligaynon, something along the lines of “San’o kamo ma puli?”, which means “When are you all going home?”
I do not think I can ever forget the look of triumph and pride on my friends’ faces once they realized that I had finally said something in Hiligaynon, and ever since then, I had more confidence in using Hiligaynon in my daily conversations.
However, since our usual mode of instruction in school was in English, and I was not so much of a talker back in high school, the progress was still slow, but I still made an effort to have more conversations in Hiligaynon, and worked on picking up more words whenever I encountered anything new. By the time I graduated in high school, I was finally able to have straight conversations with the locals. I was actually even able to use Hiligaynon in a more professional setting in twelfth grade, when I had my on-the-job training. I worked for a week in Iloilo City’s Public Attorney’s Office, and sometimes I worked with the lawyers in the notary station. We had locals come in who did not really understand English, and they wanted to have their documents notarized. Of course, all of the instructions I gave them and the interactions I had with them had to be in the Hiligaynon language. It was a real struggle, and I even had to learn how to say a multitude of terms and phrases for the first time, but it was great practice. It became more fulfilling when I realized I made it through that day, and another, up until the final work day. I was able to do it when, at some point, I was not able to speak, read, write, or understand Hiligaynon at all.
Once college came around and I started studying at the University of the Philippines Visayas, I had the chance to meet people of very different backgrounds. Some people spoke excellent Hiligaynon, and others were learning just like me. With this also being my first time getting the taste of the professional world, and a less sheltered life outside the walls of high school, I had to learn how to get around more efficiently. With this, I worked continuously to bring up my comprehension and language ability a lot further within the next three years. It came to a point where, just a couple of months ago, I was on a Discord group call with one of my former high school classmates, who I had not spoken to for a few years. I was pleasantly surprised when she said that my Hiligaynon improved considerably since the last time we talked. It was so nice to hear her say this, remembering that there was once a time when I struggled for minutes on end to spout out only a few words.
I guess now that I am venturing and trying to learn another language, it has been slightly tougher, for I am basically starting from scratch. Learning Swedish is not like learning Hiligaynon, which is actually very similar to Tagalog and thus I picked it up more naturally. Furthermore, while learning Hiligaynon, I had so many people around to talk to, and I was able to learn so much quicker because of that. This time, I am self-studying, and I do not get to speak in Swedish all that much. Nonetheless, I would say that the language learning process is definitely worth it, and it is enough to get me out of bed and study further, striving more to improve further with my target language. Not only that, but also to start talking about these experiences, and encourage more people to learn languages and keep going at it.
Hopefully, I become fluent enough to a point where I can finally start writing poetry in Swedish, without having to check Google Translate so often. Regardless of how long it might take me this time, I am sure I am going to have fun and enjoy this process as I go. At this point in time, I am honestly struggling with spontaneously saying ‘Hej’ and ‘God natt’, but maybe someday, like I did today with Hiligaynon, I can look back and think of how far I have gone, and how much further I can go.
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