MANILA, Philippines - Life is hard out here for an amboy. Especially if your Tagalog is like Manny Pacquiao’s English. If you ask me to pronounce the word tinapay it will sound like I’m informally asking the Saturday Night Live alumni who wrote Mean Girls to pay me: Tina Pay!
When I first moved here I purposely didn’t want to learn Tagalog because I always told myself I wouldn’t need it. I was going back “home” anyway. I was the biggest brat in the world. The culture shock was shocking, to say the least. I managed to go through high school and college without having to speak much Tagalog at all. The time and effort I have spent avoiding situations that forced me to speak could have gone to actually learning. I’ve been living in the Philippines on and off for about ten years now and my Tagalog has only improved as much as the educational system. It took me a while to even understand what people were saying.
If I wasn’t around English speaking people I would keep my mouth shut, which usually implied me to be suplado but really I was just taking it all in, trying to decipher what was being said. I’d laugh occasionally to make it seem like I knew what was going on but really it’s like watching a Japanese sitcom with no subtitles and taking cues from the laugh track.
And to actually speak Tagalog took even longer because I always felt awkward trying to speak the language with my American accent. I would often imitate how others would say things to disguise my weird California twang. Both of my parents speak to me in English and so do my friends so my only real basis for how to speak comes from television. I have three main Filipino accents that I subconsciously imitate: Ted Failon, Willie Revilleme, and Patrick Garcia in Mula Sa Puso. Taking a taxi home will sound like a news flash report, a game show, or a whiney overly dramatic teen with a problem. Sometimes I’ll mix all three together.
People get really confused so why even try when they can understand English anyway? Because! How embarrassing is it for me to not know my native tongue? Sure, it’s understandable when a foreign dude comes here and doesn’t know a lick of Tagalog and it’s cute when he tries, but when I try, it’s shameful. I’m Filipino by blood and only American through birthright. Jessica Sanchez knows what I’m talking about. I just happened to grow up somewhere else and never got around to mastering the language even if there was an inherent need to. It doesn’t help that when I do try people just laugh like I’m making some amboy Rex Navarette reference. I usually play along just to be funny but deep down inside I get so frustrated I make my own nose bleed and start to cry the way all children cry in afternoon telenovelas.
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Check out the author’s amboy punk band Bee Eyes at www.bee-eyes.com.