We have conducted 15 interviews in total in a church. Among all, we chose three featured cases to share with you. All of the interviewees came to Hong Kong to make a living. Some of them are university graduates and many of them have completed high school. Almost all of them are multi-lingual that they could speak more than 2 languages. Apart from Tagalog and English, they speak their own mother tongue and other languages, which were learnt during work, such as Mandarin, Cantonese and French. We will now look at the featured cases one by one.

​



‘A Filipino who does not speak Tagalog is smelt like a rotten fish.’ - Nancy



Nancy is a 50-year-old university degree holder, who has been Hong Kong for 10 years. She came to Hong Kong because she wanted to earn a living for her family and send her children to university. She has 5 children, whose ages are 31, 30, 27, 25 and 18 now. Four of her children have graduated from the university already. Nancy is able to speak 6 languages, including Tagalog, Bisayan, English, Mandarin, Cantonese and a little bit Chiu Chow. Bisayan is the dialect of the place she was born. She knows English because it is taught in the primary school in the Philippines. She knows Mandarin and Cantonese since she worked in Taiwan and Hong Kong respectively. Her father-in-law is a Chinese who speaks Chiu Chow so she knows a bit of it. She teaches her children to speak Bisayan because it is her mother tongue but she uses English to talk with them most of the time because they all learnt English from the school. Nancy loves Tagalog most and has a strong sense on it because it is her national language. She mentioned that people who do not know Tagalog in the Philippines would have ‘the smell of rotten fish’.



“A person who doesn’t look back to his origin, he will never reach his destination.” - Estella

​

Estella is 61 years old now. She would like to earn a living for her family and become a missionary so she came to Hong Kong. She speaks Ilocano, Tagalog, English, Pangasinan, and Arabic. Ilocano is her mother tongue, which she learnt it from her father, and she learnt Pangasinan from her mother. She learnt both Tagalog and English at school. She knows Arabic as well because she had been working in Kuwait. She thinks that speaking  Cantonese in Hong Kong is an advantage because it is easier to communicate with people who could not speak English. Also, it is an advantage to speak English since it is an international language. For Tagalog, she said that there is a big community in HK that can talk to. Besides, she loves Tagalog because there is a sense of gentleness within the language and she believes it is a very poetic language. She has a strong sense on it. Speaking Tagalog is a sign of love to the country and it shows a sense of belonging to the country. She mentioned an old saying during the interview: “A person who doesn’t look back to his origin, he will never reach his destination.” It shows that she has a strong attitude towards her national language – Tagalog.



“I don’t think a Filipino needs to speak Tagalog to be a Filipino.’ - Pilar

​

Pilar, whose name is a common Spanish name, is 55 years old. She has a university degree and she came to Hong Kong to earn a living for her family. She knows Hiligaynon, English, Tagalog and Cantonese. Her mother tongue is Tagalog. Hiligaynon is her village language. She used it in schools. English and Tagalog are ones of the subjects taught in schools. She likes to speak Hiligaynon since she finds it comfortable to speak. Tagalog is a compulsory language for them as a national language. She thinks speaking Cantonese is an advantage since it is more convenient and efficient for her while communicating with the Employers. English is useful too since it allows her to find work outside the Philippines. Unlike other respondents, she does not think she needs to speak Tagalog in order to be a Filipino. She has a comparatively weak attitude towards Tagalog when compared to other respondents. Though, she feels that speaking Tagalog is a must for her to communicate with her friends. Rather than Tagalog, she believes that English is more important as it is an international language. It helps developing her qualities, and best represents her identity.