I grew up with English, Cebuano (Visayan), and Tagalog spoken interchangeably around me. At an early age, I was accustomed to Visaya and English. In the 1st grade, Tagalog (Filipino) was taught as one of the subjects along with English. Having moved to the US, I'm more fluent now in English than Visaya (which we continue to speak in the house). I can still read Tagalog, but it requires more concentration on my part and digging deep to form a simple phrase coherent phrase.
My cousin and her family are now in the Philippines and visited my uncle. It's the first time her toddler and baby have met their grandpa. I was looking through their pictures posted on Facebook and one of my uncle's friends commented in deeply-rooted Visayan, which is like almost comparable to modern English and Old English. I could barely understand some of the words. It reminded me of my grandpa's toast during my other uncle's wedding, in which he spoke in old Visayan as well.
Spoken Visaya varies from region to region. The common thing between them is that it now has more borrowed words and phrases from Tagalog and English to make it easier to talk to everyone. It's pretty much how modern and spoken English has evolved, with borrowed words and terms from other languages around the world. This is what makes English so hard to learn from speakers of other languages: it's not consistent.
I read somewhere during the 2018 Winter Olympics that the joint North and South Korea women's ice hockey teams needed English translators and a list of different vocabularies to understand each other. Almost 70 years since the split that their common language usage have diverged significantly.
I wonder how language will evolve in the next 50 years. Will we still talk to each other in English or emojis? Will we be communicating in image macros and memes?
I'm done.
My cousin and her family are now in the Philippines and visited my uncle. It's the first time her toddler and baby have met their grandpa. I was looking through their pictures posted on Facebook and one of my uncle's friends commented in deeply-rooted Visayan, which is like almost comparable to modern English and Old English. I could barely understand some of the words. It reminded me of my grandpa's toast during my other uncle's wedding, in which he spoke in old Visayan as well.
Spoken Visaya varies from region to region. The common thing between them is that it now has more borrowed words and phrases from Tagalog and English to make it easier to talk to everyone. It's pretty much how modern and spoken English has evolved, with borrowed words and terms from other languages around the world. This is what makes English so hard to learn from speakers of other languages: it's not consistent.
I read somewhere during the 2018 Winter Olympics that the joint North and South Korea women's ice hockey teams needed English translators and a list of different vocabularies to understand each other. Almost 70 years since the split that their common language usage have diverged significantly.
I wonder how language will evolve in the next 50 years. Will we still talk to each other in English or emojis? Will we be communicating in image macros and memes?
I'm done.
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